


You’ll Have A Wasted Soul

by WhisperElmwood



Series: The Hastily Revised Bestiary of Stiles Stilinski (Mage) [3]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, Magic Stiles, Magical stiles, Original Character Death(s), Supernatural Creatures, Supernatural Elements, Supernatural violence, Swearing, Witch Lydia
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-12-03
Updated: 2014-04-08
Packaged: 2018-01-03 09:02:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 29,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1068613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhisperElmwood/pseuds/WhisperElmwood
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles and the Hale pack weathered the storm of the Portunes arrival in Beacon Hills fairly well, but now another group of creatures has come to town. Stiles' magic is stirring, the territory is threatened and Stiles is sure something bigger than even he has suspected is going on. This new influx of the supernatural looks set to enlighten him, at the very same time that things are getting confusing between Derek and himself. Awesome.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> It is, in fact, necessary to read the previous stories in this series, otherwise you'll be a little lost!
> 
> Chapter 01 should be up within the week.

 

**Prologue**

*

The preserve is a riot of fall colors when the clan crosses into Hale territory. They’ve travelled for a long time, leaving Sacramento far behind them, following a feeling they can barely name, hoping it will take them to safety. When they cross the boundary, a sense of security, of invulnerability, permeates every single member, a shiver that travels down the spines of each of them as they step over the invisible line between _outside_ and _in_.

The local Portunes are wary. They’ve come out in their thousands, having sensed the approaching incursion into the territory. They’re watching and waiting, curious and a little angry that their so recently acquired home is now being invaded by bigger, stronger, more powerful beings than themselves. They chatter amongst themselves, the low sussuration of their voices mingling with that of the leaves as a soft wind picks up.

As the clan passes, the air shifts, the breeze grows stronger, and a dry, dusty air gathers, coalesces and forms into a vaguely humanoid shape. It pauses, towering over the members of the clan as they make their way through the trees, slowly turns it’s head in the direction of the watching Portunes.

After a moment, it ponderously lifts a limb, swirls of dust bleeding from it’s edges, presses the tip of a digit to its mouth and grins; the holes where its eyes should be light up, as bright as the midday sun and they flash, briefly, as if the creature has blinked. The wind picks up again and the figure dissolves and swirls into dust and is gone.

The clan continues, dozens and dozens of them, maybe a hundred members, burdened with the possessions they could carry, young ones sticking close to their elders, the elders silent and watchful. They move in silence, feet barely even leaving a mark on the ground. They walk and walk with steadfast purpose, until the last has crossed the border and disappeared into the Preserve.

When the area is clear of the interlopers, the Portunes break into angry chatter, stream down in their thousands from the trees, the bushes, half-buried rocks, to inspect every inch of the boundary the clan just crossed, learning what they can.

It is a long time indeed before the Portunes settle down again.

 

 *


	2. Chapter 01

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Seriously, warning for violence and death in this one - deaths of original characters, all around violence. More explicit warnings at the end (which contain mild spoilers).
> 
> Thanks to Emeraldincandescent for the BETA :D

**Chapter 01**

 

*

The careful concentration and rhythm of gently slicing the bark from the branch has Stiles almost completely engrossed, almost meditative. He takes great care with the blade, makes long, slow slices, top to bottom, with the blade at a low angle, cautious of gouging into the wood. The bark comes away from the branch in thin curls, drops and piles between his feet, a nest of silver-brown snakes coiling together.

He hadn’t even known he wanted a staff. Not until he’d picked up the hazel branch, felt his magic stir inside him, like it was calling to it. Now he’s enjoying the simple pleasure of making something of his own with his own hands. He can feel the way the branch calls to him, quiescent, waiting. He’s not sure what will happen when he’s done, when it’s finished, but he’s looking forward to it and wants to get it right.

Deaton is moving around somewhere nearby, Stiles can feel him on the edge of his senses as he works. He’d come to Deaton with the branch, told him how he’d found it, that he _needed_ to make it into a staff, asking for help and Deaton had given him a slight smile, an unreadable expression crossing his features too quickly and then cocked his head at an interested angle. Then he’d told him to research it himself, research how to dry it and clean it, take the bark off, sand it and treat it. Firmly told him this was something he needed to do himself.

So Stiles had gone away again, done his research, learned what he needed to know. He’d still felt the urge to ask Deaton for help, though. And Deaton had still told him no. It was beyond frustrating.

He did, however, give him the space at the back of the clinic to use to work, in privacy, without interruption.

Until now.

“Tell me about the spell that went wrong, Mr Stilinski.”

Stiles glances up, his fingers continuing the gentle removal of bark. “Which one?”

Deaton simply quirks an eyebrow at him, folds his arms over his chest with an amused, sarcastic twist to his lips, a change from the usual non-expression he wears. There’s a brief flash of something he can’t read in the man’s eyes. Someone, probably Derek, has told him then.

Stiles snorts, looks back at the branch again, lets another strip of bark twist and curl to the pile between his feet. “It was meant to be a viewing spell. The book said I’d open my eyes and see the view I wanted overlaid over the actual view in front of me.”

“And how was the spell different when you used it?”

Stiles pauses and thinks back to it. It’s been almost a month since he’d done it, but he still remembers the washed out colours and deadened sounds clearly. “Well. It _took_ me to the places I wanted to look at, instead of just showing them to me?”

Deaton’s eyebrows rise, “Go on.”

Stiles carefully strips another piece of bark as he thinks, “Well. Everything was washed out, like I was looking through a piece of thin white cloth. And I couldn’t really hear, just sort of, got _impressions_ of sound.”

Deaton shifts and Stiles glances back up at him again. Deaton moves to the other chair in the room, drags it over and places it facing Stiles. He takes a seat, elbows propped on his knees as he leans forwards, “Tell me everything about this spell; how you felt, what you did, how you moved, what you saw. Leave nothing out.”

So Stiles does. He keeps working on the branch, the pile of bark growing and growing, as he talks about the tug at his navel, the way he’d jumped from scene to scene between the blink of an eye, the way he seemed to be moving around in time as well as space. He explains the drain on his magic, the worst headache he had ever had in his life afterwards, and the way he slept for something like sixteen hours straight when he got home. He explains how he’d frightened the life out of the pack when they thought he was dead.

Deaton stays silent throughout, expression barely changing, until Stiles finishes.

The older man sits up straight, folds his arms across his chest again, as Stiles slides his fingers over the branch, checking for any bark left behind.

“Well, Mr Stilinski, that was an extremely stupid thing to do.”

Stiles frowns at him, “That is brand new information, thank you.”

Deaton grunts lightly, “However. What you performed was not a viewing spell. It was in fact not a spell at all.”

Stiles looks up at him, gives him his full attention this time, “Then what? What did I do?”

Deaton tilts his head again, and when he speaks he’s fallen into the Lecturer voice he uses when he wants Stiles, or Derek, or Scott to pay attention, “The Ancient Egyptians called it Ka, the Japanese mention Ikiryo, the Hindu speak of the Lin’ga S’ari-ra. The Subtle Body.” He blinks, slowly, “Skeptics and scientists call it an OBE, an Out of Body Experience. It was Soul Flight. You soul travelled, dream walked or, in more colloquial terms, you performed an Astral Projection.”

Stiles yelps as he slices into the pad of his finger, distracted as he is by Deaton and the information he’s imparting. He manages to smear blood into the grain of the stripped branch before he can pull his hand away, quickly suck the finger into his mouth to stop blood getting everywhere.

Deaton arches a brow at him, gets up and comes back a moment later with a clean cloth and first aid kit, “The blood should aid with tying the staff to yourself, at least.”

“Yeah, great.” Stiles submits to having the wound cleaned, winces a little at the sting of antiseptic and grimaces when he binds it, thinks of the healing spells he was reading about just last night. “Dude, I need to learn those healing spells, this sucks.” After a moment, he continues, “Seriously though? Astral Projection?”

Deaton rises and puts the first aid kit away, throws the now bloody cloth in the sink, “Yes. And you should practice it. The more you practice, the less the drain on your magic and the stronger your endurance. Though, I suggest _warning_ your friends before you do so, to avoid a reoccurrence of the last result.”

Stiles snorts, “Maybe I should get an ‘I aten’t dead’ sign, wear it round my neck when I practice.”

Deaton quirks a brow at him again, gives him the most deadpan look he’s ever seen on the man.

“Uh. Granny Weatherwax? Borrowing? Terry Pratchett? Ringing any bells at all here? No? Really? None?”

Deaton sighs and shakes his head as he leaves the room, heading back to whatever he’d been doing before interrupting him.

“What! I read! Don’t you read? Oh my god, I cannot be the only person in Beacon Hills who reads those books, seriously. Wow.”

\---

“We’ve gone kinda far, Brad.” The boy says, as he bends slightly to avoid branches his friend easily walks under, tugging at the sleeves of his hoody in a futile attempt to pull them down over his wrists. The boy pauses and turns to look back at the distant glimmer of the bonfire their friends are all still lounging or dancing around, all of them too drunk by this point to care about much of anything, let alone about the two of them leaving to investigate what had looked like a pretty woman in a party dress beckoning to them.

“It’s fiiiiine,” Brad says, slurring a little, “Lady wanted some comp’ny - who’re we t’deny her?”

“I think - I think maybe we should leave her to it.”

Brad laughs, guffaws really, and throws his empty beer can out into the shadows of the trees, they hear it crash against something solid and rattle into the underbrush, “Not happenin’ bro, lady looked lonely!”

“But - doesn’t it seem sketchy to you? That - that she’s out here? Alone?

Brad pauses in kicking his way through the underbrush and jabs a finger at his friend, “Stop trippin’ out on me, man! You _saw_ her, you saw that raaaaack,” he makes rounded motions at his own chest, “Oh my _god_ Robbie, if you stop me, I swear _t’god_.”

Robbie’s shoulders slump as he stares at his friend’s hang-dog expression, “Fine.”

They stumble out into a large clearing, leaving the cover of the trees behind them. A flash of the yellow party dress has them heading further toward the center of the space, crossing it to reach the other side. Robbie stares at the statue-like scarecrows set up with a large sign proudly proclaiming Beacon Hills first Scarecrow Festival as they pass them. They look like lumpy mannequins, posed oddly on a line of brightly colored bicycles, lit up from below by temporary outdoor spotlights. They’re almost realistic, just enough to make them creepy. Brad kicks at one, before grunting and moving past, looking for the woman.

Another flash of yellow has them changing direction again and before long they’ve moved through the next patch of woodland and come out into another clearing. It’s beautiful, lit up by the moon, the grass almost reaching his knees and smells like half remembered flowers he doesn’t know the name of. Robbie can’t hear the party anymore, can’t see the bonfire and as he turns around and around, realizes he can’t remember which way they came.

“Brad...”

“Dude, I found shroom’s, wanna try?”

“What? _No_. Brad, seriously.”

Brad yelps, jumps hastily to his feet. “The _fuck_ , something bit me.”

Robbie ignores him and looks around again, trying to remember the way back. Everything’s dark, clouds covering the moon, the stars, no ambient light coming through anywhere. The shapes of the trees around them twist in his mind, becoming more threatening than trees should have any right to be. Something moves, out past his ability to see clearly and he shivers, focuses on it.

Brad yelps again, “Dude, I think we found a bug nest or something.”

He glances over, Brad’s wiping something off his thigh, then he looks back to the trees and whatever it was is long gone now. He shivers again, hugs himself briefly. “Brad, we should go back.”

“Yeah, I don’t think any skirts worth _this_. These bites fucking _hurt_ , man.”

Robbie starts as something bites him on the neck, pain radiating out from the source in hot waves, slaps a hand to it. He touches something solid, pulls it away, expects a large bug, finds a tiny stone in his palm. “What the hell...”

He’s hit again, yelps. The pain is excruciating and he’s hit a third time as he brushes the stone off his arm. “Brad, these aren’t-”

He doesn’t get time to finish the thought. Suddenly they’re being hit by dozens of the stones, a rain of them from every direction, each bite as painful as the first, the pain growing and merging, spreading through his whole body.

“The trees! Get in the trees!” Brad grabs his arm and they run, still being hit by the stones, pain blooming with every bite, making it hard to move, let alone run. It’s like a fire has been lit in his veins, burning white hot through his body, worst at the point of contact, but even as they run, utterly lost and blind into the trees, more stones hit them, more pain blooms.

Brad’s fingers slip away, suddenly, and he’s gone in an eye-blink. Robbie falls, feet slipping on the uneven ground, ends up in a pile of limbs in the leaf litter. He can barely see, his eyes unfocused, the world throbbing and distorted around him. He can’t get up. Can’t move at all. “Brad,” he tries to call out, but his voice is a mere whisper. A rustling beside him has him looking up and he screams, terror giving his voice power again.

The thing, the woman, the _creature_ that might be a woman, leans down over him, her pale dirty hair falling in tangles around her shoulders, twigs and leaves knotted into it. She’s got a curved, almost circular knife in her hand, stained dark brown, and his terrified mind focusses on that, decides it’s blood, can’t stop thinking about it. He tries to move away, scrabbles at the soft ground, tries to get away from her grinning mouth, her wide, crazy eyes, but he can barely move. Her long, pendulous black breasts slide over his arm as she leans in closer. He whimpers.

She sniffs at him, almost delicately, her nose poking into his cheek. Her tongue reaches out and slides over his face and he can’t feel anything but the spreading warmth between his legs, shame briefly overriding the terror.

A low rumbling, almost coughing sound emanates from her chest and then she stands, winds her fingers into his shirt and begins to drag him across the uneven, damp ground.

He doesn’t know where she takes him, just that it doesn’t take long, his useless limbs dragging over broken branches, jagged rocks, scraping and bruising. He can barely feel it, can’t move at all, has the horrible feeling he’s going to die. He offers up every prayer he can think of as she drags him, whimpering because he can’t talk, crying because he wants to go home, to his mom, his sisters.

She throws him down in a hollow and Brad is there, he’s lying right there. Relief briefly flashes through his body, only to disappear a second later when he looks closer.

He whines, chokes on a sob, when he realizes Brad is already gone. He’s lying face down, throat open almost deep enough to take his whole head off, blood soaking into the ground beneath him. He wants to vomit, can’t, wants to scream and cry and fight and fight and tear and stab and run, get home. Can’t.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, sorry sorry sorry sorry-”

He cuts off as a hand moves him, lifts him up, and he’s staring at... He doesn’t know. It’s hair looks like grass, growing straight out of the body, it’s skin is leathery, old. The arm holding him is spindly but doesn’t waver, doesn’t shake, fingers knotted so tightly in his shirt.

It scrutinizes him, eyes as crazy as the other creature, then the mouth breaks into a wide grin, showing old teeth, brown, broken. It lifts a knife, curved and wicked looking, pokes at his throat almost gently. He doesn’t feel the cut, but he can feel the blood slide down his skin, into his shirt.

“P..please...” He manages to croak out, but it ignores him, turns him over and drops him face first onto the ground again, beside Brad’s body.

Fingers wrap into his hair, roughly lift his head and he stares at the tree tops, thinking of his family, wishing he could see them, wishing he could go home.

It’s not quick.

\---

Stiles keeps the whole ‘astral projection’ thing to himself, waiting it out until he’s made sense of it in his own head. Deaton may have been matter of fact over it all, but Stiles can tell there’s something more that he’s just not talking about, something deeper and probably a bit scary. Or a lot scary, knowing his life. He knows he should tell someone, Scott maybe, even if it would go a little over his head; not that Scott’s stupid, because he’s really not, but he can be a little bullheaded still, about the weirder stuff. Anyway, he just can’t. At least, not yet. Not until he’s made sense of how he feels about it in himself.

So, they’re working on their latest batch of terrifyingly heavy piles of homework together instead, and avoiding any and all references to the supernatural in their lives. It’s a Friday night and they’ve taken over the kitchen table in the Stilinski home, books and paper and pens and coffee and chips and dip and mess everywhere.

Tonight they are normal teenagers, trying to finish off their last year of high school without cracking under the pressure. Which is actually fairly typical for them these days, really. That first summer after Scott was bitten, he started a trend in himself of actually trying to improve his education, and it stuck. He’s by no means the best in any of his classes, but he’s absolutely no longer the worst and with his grades the way they are now, Stiles is proud to say that Scott will actually get into college.

Today’s trial is English Lit, a subject Stiles has grown to love, but which Scott has grown to dread. Torture implement of choice this session, Beowulf.

“Not sure I can like that.” He pokes at a print out of an analysis of Beowulf’s final battle scene with his pen, “Choosing my own death, sure, but death in battle, as a warrior? Honestly think I’d prefer to die in my sleep, when I’m a hundred and fifty years old and laughing ‘cause I outlived everyone else. Y’know?”

Scott snorts at him and doesn’t give the obvious ‘if we ever live that long’ response that’s normally thrown around in these sorts of conversations. Scott looks up distractedly instead, lifts his pen from his notes, “Laughing, in your sleep?”

“Yeah, man. I don’t wanna be awake for it. But I will _totally_ be laughing,” he pokes his pen in Scott’s direction, “You just wait and see. Or not. Because I’ma outlive you. Ha.”

Scott rolls his eyes at him, “Right. I’ll just kick your ass when you finally give it up and join me on the other side, then.”

Stiles grins, “Glad that’s settled.”

They go back to their analysis and essay writing, the kitchen quiet, apart from the hum of the refrigerator and the scratch of their pens, the slight rustle of the days old bandage on his sliced  finger against his pen. It doesn’t take long, though, before Scott face-plants with a groan into his book. “I hate English Lit, oh my god Stiles. Why am I even doing this.”

Stiles doesn’t even look up from his essay, reaches over and taps him on the head with his well chewed pen instead, “Dude, you need the grades if you want to get into a decent pre-vet program, you know that. Gotta be done, man.”

Scott simply groans again.

Stiles keeps writing for a long moment, letting him stew. Eventually Scott sits up a little, and Stiles glances up in time to see him drop his chin into his hand, settling in to watch him, twirling his pen around his fingers, “S’alright for you.

“What?” He stops writing and eyes his friend warily.

Scott gives him one of his patented ‘you are not that dense’ looks, “Seriously dude, you and Lydia. You guys could do anything you want, go anywhere you want. We’ve always known that.” The implied ‘you’re not wolves, either, you’re not constrained by the need to hide that’ goes unsaid but still heard.

Stiles never really knows how to respond to this accusation. Sure he’s got the grades for it, maybe the brains for it, but he hasn’t got the funds, not really. And there’s so many other things to consider; his dad, the pack, his ties to Beacon Hills itself. His magic and his need to be able to bug Deaton about it whenever he can, as well.

He shrugs, “Maybe.” He’s applied to at least six different colleges, still has no idea which ones he’ll actually get into or which one he’ll even go to if he is accepted. He doesn’t want to go too far, not really, but there’s a growing itch inside him to throw it all in, go to the college the farthest away, to do some traveling, to see the country. He’s not mentioned it to anyone though, not even his dad who might understand. He puts it down to a general teenage restlessness.

He might take his jeep on a road trip next summer, before college starts, see if that soothes the itch.

Before he can say anything further, though, his dad opens the front door, “Evening boys.” Stiles turns and listens as his dad divests himself of his work gear, “Hey, dad!”

Scott matches him with a “Hi, Sheriff.”

His dad comes into the kitchen a moment later in his shirtsleeves, gun and holster wrapped up and held tightly in one hand. With his other hand, he pulls a small packet from his pocket, places it on the table in a space Stiles hastily clears amongst all the books and papers.

Stiles quirks a brow at it, as he shuffles his papers together, “What’s that?”

Scott goes to poke it with his pen, but his dad raps his knuckles in reprimand, startling him into a jump, “Don’t. Here,” he puts the gun down on the counter behind him, then turns back to the packet and carefully unfolds it.

“Do you have any idea what these are?”

The folds of paper reveal a dozen or so small stones. They look hand carved and wicked sharp. They also look like miniature arrowheads, maybe a half inch in length, if that. They glisten faintly under the stark fluorescent kitchen lights.

Scott shakes his head, “Just look like stone arrowheads to me.”

Stiles picks one up, gently - still managing to nick his finger - and examines it. He can feel a low level of magic emanating from the thing - a fair bit more from the pile on the table. With a tiny spark of his magic, between one blink and the next he weaves the spell he uses to see magic, then nearly drops the stone in shock.

It’s completely wrapped in Small Magics, glowing between his fingers like an ember. He glances at the pile on the table and has to blink the spell away again, they’re just too bright collected together like that, hurt his eyes.

“I hate when you do that, your eyes go all.. _weird_.” Scott says and Stiles frowns at him, then his dad, who stays silent but doesn’t disagree either.

“They’re Elf Shot,” he says, ignoring the comment for now.

His dad sighs, pulls out a chair and sits down as Stiles drops the little arrowhead back in the pile. “Of course. The supernatural again.”

His dad wraps them up again, “And what _is_ Elf Shot, exactly?”

Stiles wipes his sluggishly bleeding, and extremely painful, finger on his jeans, “Well, most of the time, it just means stone arrowheads from the pre-bronze age eras in Scotland and England, they find them scattered all over the place there apparently. But _these_ ones are the genuine article, arrowheads fired by actual Fey Folk, intended to cause pain, disorientation and paralysis.”

“And you just let one _cut_ you?” His dad reaches over and grabs his hand, inspecting the cut on his finger.

“It’s _fine_ , dad,” Stiles lets him do it though, “You need loads of them to get any real danger, the spells are too weak on their own.” His dad doesn’t look like he believes him, neither does Scott. He rolls his eyes,  “Fine, it hurts like a bitch, but it’s not doing anything else.”

Scott takes his hand as his dad grudgingly lets go and a moment later there isn’t as much pain any more. Werewolf pain-syphoning abilities are awesome. He gives Scott a grateful grin.

“So where’d you get them?”

His dad sighs again, eying the faint black lines tracing up Scott’s arm, “A field on the western edge of town. Couple’a kids were found this morning. There was a big frat party last night, bonfire, kegs, the usual. No one knows why the two boys left and no one missed them, hikers found the bodies out by the scarecrow festival ads.”

“Ugh. What have I been telling everyone about those scarecrows? Goddamn creepy ass - was it them? It could be them. I don’t trust the Mayor, we could be having a whole Buffy situation here y’know. At the opening ceremony, he’ll grin at us all and then BAM,” he flails just a little, “snake demon.”

Scott snorts and his dad just looks unimpressed.

“I shouldn’t tell you this much, but if you’re right about it being Elf Shot, then... There were hundreds of these lying around. And the two boys were drained of their blood, completely. Amongst other wounds.”

Stiles can’t help it, “ _Vampires_? Are you kidding me?”

The look his dad gives him is very much ‘you tell me, kid’. So he subsides as Scott leans forward, “We’ll go check it out, Mr Stilinski, see if there’s anything else we can find that maybe wouldn’t show up to a Police Officer.”

His dad runs a hand over his face wearily, “Not that I can stop you two when you get these ideas into your heads anyway, but fine. If you can find me something that will help me cover up the whole supernatural element when I write my reports, that would be very much appreciated.”

Stiles and Scott start clearing things away, while his dad watches, “Just, don’t get caught ok, son? I can’t cover that up, and I sure as hell bet you can’t explain things away if you are.”

“We will be the masters, _masters_ I say, of discretion, dad.”

His dad gives him an incredulous look.

\---

Stiles gives one of the scarecrows, the one that looks like it’s meant to be a woman riding a bright pink bicycle while grinning broadly and wearing a lot of make-up, the stink-eye. Then he pokes it in the face hard enough to nearly break the papier mache skin. “I swear, if these things come to life and murder the whole town, I will say ‘I told you so’ so loudly. And repeatedly.” He pokes it again, suspiciously, “And loudly.”

Scott just laughs at him, “Dude, they’re just sculptures.”

“Yeah! That look like golems!” He kicks at the tire, “And you know what golems are used for, I have told you about them, don’t pretend that I haven’t.”

This time Scott rolls his eyes as he hunkers down and runs his claws through the leaf litter. “Your dad was right, there’s Elf Shot everywhere.” He picks one up delicately between his claws, lifts it up to the high-beams from Stiles jeep, it’s not exactly late, but the night’s are drawing in much more quickly now, so they need the lights.

Stiles sifts through the leaf litter with the toe of his shoe, not willing to get another cut, considering it’s been a half hour and the first one still smarts, even after Scott’s help. “Can you smell anything, though?”

Scott takes an exaggeratedly big sniff, something Stiles knows very well he doesn’t actually  have to do, knows it’s all for show, and shrugs. “Mostly I smell old damp earth, dead leaves and... huh.” Scott looks around, “Well, it smells a bit like the middle of summer. That’s really weird.”

Stiles raises his brows, “Y’think? It’s the middle of _October_. And since when did ‘middle of summer’ have a scent? That’s not exactly specific.”

Scott shrugs again, “Well, what can you see?”

Stiles pulls a face at him and weaves the sight-spell back into place.

“Dude, I wish you could see this,” he says softly, as the world lights up around him between one blink and the next, threaded with silver and bronze. There are spots of white-gold scattered across the field like a galaxy of earthbound stars, each steady glow a tiny piece of Elf Shot. He scrutinizes everything he can see from this vantage point and shrugs, looking at Scott, “Nothing more than Elf Shot, need to walk around a bit if I want a proper look.”

Scott stands, “Alright.”

As they start to walk around the edge of the field, Stiles casts a glance at his friend. It is one of the weirdest things about what he can do now, seeing his friend through these eyes.

Werewolves are creatures of magic, it’s how the bite works, how the transformations work and there’s almost nothing actually scientific about it - something Lydia has been consistently pissed off about since finding out.

When he looks at them using this spell, he can see the magic woven through them. It threads through their bodies in tiny veins of gold, following some arbitrary, and totally individual, beautiful pattern on each of them, swirls, knots, roots, trails of light spreading under their skin, an intricate weave that he sometimes just wants to follow, see if he can find a beginning or an end.

When he looks at Scott, when he can see that map of gold spread across his skin, like a subway map to his friends new life... sometimes he’s in awe of it. But mostly he’s sorry for it, for being the unwitting contributor in creating it. He never got to see what Scott looked like through these eyes as a human. Never will.

“Anything?”

Scott breaks him out of his maudlin haze and he looks around properly. Still nothing more than the scattered Elf Shot, and there’s nothing they can learn from the Elf Shot here that they can’t learn from the collection his dad has. He shakes his head, “Nope. Nothing yet.”

They both keep walking anyway. Scott has them detouring to follow the trail of the boys scents, where they wandered and where they ran the night before, exploring the entire trail until finally they reach and skirt the edge of the police tape barrier opposite the ugly sculptures. Scott pauses there and appears to be holding his breath.

“What is it?”

“Blood. It wasn’t vampires, they’d drink it, right? Take it away, maybe. I mean, they’d need to take it, wouldn’t they? Not leave any of it behind.” Scott takes a step closer, craning his neck to look past the barrier into the shadows, “There’s blood everywhere here. Not on the surface though, so the cops must have missed it.”

Stiles wrinkles his nose, “So it’s buried?”

Scott nods, “I think so? Come on, I have to go in there.”

Stiles glances around quickly, doesn’t see anything other than silver and bronze, a few traces of Elf Shot, “Well, there’s no big magic about, go ahead.”

Stiles shoots a text off to his dad as Scott slides into the hollow.

 

To: Dad

Whatever did this buried the blood in the hollow, so NOT vampires.

 

He gets the reply as he’s sliding down the slope into the hollow behind Scott, feels the vibration against his hip and smiles a little, checks it when he reaches the bottom and can dig his phone back out again.

 

From: Dad

Reassuring. Don’t disturb anything.

 

He doesn’t respond, doesn’t need to yet.

When he puts it away again, he notices Scott is actually covering his nose, “That much blood, huh?” Scott nods, grimaces. He’s pretty grateful that Scott’s had an anchor for years at this point, knows how to control himself completely, this much blood scent must be playing havoc with his more feral side.

Scott crouches, runs his claws through the leaf litter and down to the soil, “Yeah, it’s all in here, loads of it, but right down deep.”

Stiles joins him, moves the leaf litter out of the way with his foot and touches the soil with his fingers, carefully. “Yeah. They didn’t bury it,” and he’s not sure how he knows this, can just feel it when he touches the soil, gets a flash of what happened in his mind. Something else new that he’ll have to think about later. “They let it soak in. Dropped the bodies here, probably still alive, cut them open and just let the blood soak in. Must have taken ages.”

Scott wrinkles his nose, “That’s disgusting.”

“Yeah, but it tells me something about what they might be, because you’re right, it’s not vampires.” Definitely an elf of some sort, obviously, but a Dusky Elf most likely. Which means he needs to go be annoyed at the Portunes, because yeah, they’re right, things are changing. Also, they didn’t warn him.

As they both get back to their feet, something stings him and he recognizes that pain, has already suffered through it, knows exactly what it is. Just as he grabs Scott’s arm, Scott’s stung as well, yelps at it. “They’re back, fucking Elf Shot,” he says urgently, trying to ignore the fire lighting up in his veins, grits his teeth against it. “We need to go, _now_.”

Scott nods and they turn to go, just as a barrage of Elf Shot falls around them. Scott moves too fast for many to hit, still grunts a little each time one does, but Stiles has to throw up a barrier, pulls from his magic to do it, doesn’t do it quite quickly enough, feels the pain radiating out from his bare forearms, his neck, one or two in his flanks.

“Stiles!”

He looks up at Scott’s yell, comes face to face with - _something_ \- looses a shrill squeak of surprise and stumbles backwards. He’d been too busy trying to maintain the shield, hadn’t noticed the Elf Shot suddenly stopping, and the two creatures making their appearance. They’re _definitely_ elves. Absurdly, his attention centers on the slingshots dangling from thin wrists, before he drags it away, falls over an unexpected rock in his path.

“Fuck!"

The ash coloured female lunges at him, her tangled mop of almost silver hair flying around her head, her long, black breasts swinging as she twists, brings her sickle down and his shield has dropped in his shock, his dad is going to be so pissed at him. The sickle slides down his leg, cutting through his jeans, into his flesh and he yells out, the pain worse than he’d ever imagined it could be, slams an untested spell he’d been reading about into her chest purely on instinct, didn’t even have to consciously pull a thread of magic to do it. He’ll think about that later, when he’s not being sliced to ribbons by an elf.

She goes flying, all guttural shrieks in a language he doesn’t know, doesn’t even recognize, slams into a tree, crumples into a heap at the bottom and that gives him the time to throw his shield back up, cursing himself for losing concentration in the first place.

He staggers to his feet, sees Scott tangled up with the other elf, this one probably male, skin leathery, knotted and dark as oak, hair - _not_ hair, fresh green _grass_ growing straight from his scalp, neck and shoulders, rippling like a field in a summer breeze as he moves. He’s carrying a sickle as well and Stiles puts things together, comes up with ‘Field Elf’, just in time for the female he should have been paying attention to to lunge at him again.

She hits his barrier, screams at him, claws at nothing, tries to get through it with her blood-stained sickle. He just keeps backing away, left hand grasping at his thigh, slippery with blood, tripping over his feet as he stares at her, concentrates on the shield as he’s taking it all in.

Her eyes - her eyes look cloudy and pained, like she’s not all there and he still has his sight spell working, he can see the swirls of spell casting shrouding her entire body, can see it on the male as well when he flicks his gaze frantically to see if Scott’s ok, and underneath it all, a faint trace of gold natural magic is almost made invisible by the glow.

Scott manages to throw the male off, into a large rock and it doesn’t get up again, only groans and shakes his head. The female screams, foreign words mixing in with the feral sound, takes a final swipe at Stiles and dashes to her partner, grabs him, lifts him and together, they disappear into the trees.

“Stiles, _god_ , are you ok?” Scott rushes to his side, barely even breathing hard after the fight, though he’s bearing more than a few slow healing sickle wounds.

Stiles takes no chances, grabs Scott’s arm, “We’re leaving, we are leaving right the fuck now, and you need to help me because _fuck_.” His left leg is bleeding, _badly_ , he can’t put any weight on it, falls back down when he tries. Worse, enough of the Elf Shot hit him that the spells are beginning to work, making his vision hazy, his mind fuzzy. Scott hesitates, then lifts him fireman style and they’re leaping away.

Stiles suffers the indignity, doesn’t really care right now, so long as they get away from the Field Elves. He shuts off the sight-spell as Scott runs, grits his teeth at every jolt to his leg.

\---

Derek’s loft is closest.

Stiles is really sick of getting blood all over his jeep, feels like he should institute a ‘no blood’ policy with it or something, refuse entrance to any and all blood bleeding people. Wolves. Pack mates. _Whatever_. He may be feeling a little light headed. Also he’s shaking and it’s really annoying, because Scott isn’t. Doesn’t. Hasn’t ever, not since the bite. Not for adrenaline/shock/blood loss reasons, anyway.

Scott gets him all the way up to Derek’s floor, one arm gripping his waist, the other holding Stiles’ arm over his shoulders and Derek must have heard them coming, smelled them maybe, because he’s already got the door open when they step out of the clanky elevator. He’s not sure what that expression is on Derek’s face, files it away for later perusal, when he’s not bleeding everywhere and feeling like he might die, or shake apart at the seams.

“What happened?” Derek takes some of Stiles weight, lifts Stiles free arm over his broad shoulders, not that he needs to, and Stiles doesn’t care, leans into him a little, just because he can, has the excuse, doesn’t get those often enough. His heart is already jack-hammering and he thinks he missed some time somewhere, because he doesn’t remember getting out of the jeep.

“Field Elves,” Stiles declares, slurring a little, as they lower him to the sofa. He sinks into it gratefully, really happy to be off his feet, less pressure on his thigh. It’s been just long enough that the paralyzing effects of the spells on the Elf Shot are wearing off. Thankfully, not enough hit him to make it last longer. At least they kept him from aggravating the wound in the jeep.

“Field Elves?” Derek repeats, or questions, whatever, as he quickly disappears into the kitchen area, bangs things around. Scott removes the temporary tourniquet made of his belt from Stiles thigh and tears at his jeans with a claw, cuts the material right open to expose the wound. Stiles would complain, but he hurts a bit too much right now and his fingers are tingling, which he seems to remember being a bad sign.

“Yeah. Great big Elves with knives and temper issues.” Scott explains as he works, “They killed a couple of college kids last night, we went to see what we could find. They surprised us. Didn’t know they’d come back to the scene. Or still be there. Whatever.”

“How big?” Derek’s back and he has a first aid kit in his hands, the big one. Stiles smiles up at him, feeling really woozy. His hands are really shaking now, he can feel it traveling up his arms into his shoulders. “Very big. The biggest. Also, grass, did I mention grass?” Derek gives him a weird look, one he can’t be bothered to interpret, so he shuts up instead, watches them get the first aid kit open, pull out swabs and iodine and thread.

Scott and Derek work quickly to clean him up, he thinks. He’s pretty sure he’s losing time again, knows they’re talking to each other, but misses every word. He tries not to watch, he’s never been good at his own blood. Or needles. He’s even less good at needles when they’re pointed at him. He catalogues the different physical reactions his body is going through, tries to remember what they all mean. Loses some more time. Scott and Derek move around the room like he’s in a strobe-lit room, stop motion animation done badly.

He comes to the decision that when he stops feeling like he’s floating, he’s going to try out the healing spell he was reading about. It worked with the concussive spell on the Elf, right? He’d never practiced that one before. Stands to reason that this one should work as well, right?

Actually. No. He’s not having any of this needle nonsense.

Scott’s got the thread and needle out to sew him up and Derek’s got a really constipated look on his face, a muscle in his jaw is ticking a little as he inspects the wound, something Stiles will find hilarious later, he’s sure, but they both look really serious and he is having none of it. Stiles leans forward just as Scott brings the needle to the wound and pushes Scott’s hands away, “Wait, no, lemme...”

“Stiles, what-” Scott protests, hastily moving the needle out of the way as Derek puts a hand on Stiles elbow, steadying him. Derek’s constipated expression suddenly gains more eyebrow action as he frowns deeply, “Stiles, we need to get the wound closed.”

He may be feeling a bit - alright, a _lot_ \- weird right now, blood loss, adrenaline, whatever, but he remembers the spell clearly. “I wanna try, just...”

He closes his eyes, pictures what the spell wants, needs, reaches inside for a spark of his magic. He draws it up and instead of directing it to his hands, like he usually does, directs it to the deep, still sluggishly bleeding gash in his left thigh.

The spell had called for a ‘knitting together’ and he maybe takes that a bit literally when he imagines his magic threading it’s way along the gash, sewing it together like a real needle and thread, bright strand of magic pulling tight and holding together, knotting at both ends. As he does this, he mutters the spell itself under his breath, slowly, repeatedly, “Læcedómas, Læcedómas, Læcedómas...”

“Stiles!” Derek’s voice washes over him as he jolts suddenly, a whole body convulsion as the spell kicks in. Two sets of hands grab him, hold him up and he doesn’t know which hands are whos, doesn’t care, just concentrates on the points of contact grounding him.

And it hurts. It really hurts. “Oh my _god_ , I regret everything ever,” he manages to grit out as he curls in on himself despite the steadying grips, every muscle tightening as the pain radiates from the already aching wound, joining with that of the handful of Elf Shot wounds.

Everything tunnels away from him, goes grey, then black.

He opens his eyes again to Scott and Derek both glaring at him.

Scott laughs a little, sounding weird, not amused at all, “You gotta stop testing new spells this way, Stiles. _Jesus_.”

“That was untested?” And Derek sounds even less amused. He sounds angry. Stiles can’t find it in himself to care, even as the pain subsides and he sighs, looks down at his leg, curious, still woozy. His vision bleeds at the edges, things going fuzzy, spots of light and dark and blur dancing around in front of him.

Derek’s got his hand on Stiles’ bare knee and he’s draining the pain, black edging up his forearm. Stiles watches it for a moment, thinks it looks a little like the patterns of magic that he can see threading through Derek when he’s got his sight spell going. He looks away, before he can reach out to touch, drags his gaze back to the wound instead.

The wound is still there, still very raw looking, but the bleeding has stopped and he can see it slowly healing, a much slower version of what the wolves all do when they get hurt. It’s fascinating. He reaches down unsteadily to poke at it, but Derek grabs his fingers, squeezes them slightly, “Stiles, don’t. And why the hell did you do that?”

Stiles tugs his hand back, flops backwards on the sofa, suddenly and overwhelmingly exhausted. At least he’s not shaking as bad anymore, though.

“I hate needles.” And that’s not at all what he meant to say. He meant to say that he trusts himself, even if they don’t. He meant to say he’s not useless and he can fix his own fuck-ups. He meant to say - he meant to say a lot of things, but he didn’t, so he swallows the words down, packs them tightly in his chest, where they can’t bother him right now.

Scott lets out an explosive breath, “Fuck, Stiles, that could have gone so badly.”

Derek stands suddenly and Stiles looks up at him, watches as he begins to pace, threading his hands through his hair in a frustrated manner. Laments the loss of the pain draining contact. He’s definitely still a little woozy, Derek’s all blurry at the edges, so’s Scott and he’s not sure how to read their reactions right now, so he sighs and settles further back into the cushions of the sofa, feels the exhaustion washing over him, his limbs heavy, drawing him down.

After a moment, Scott pokes him, and he jerks a little, “‘M’awake.” He shifts his leg a bit. He can feel it healing, can actually see it healing as well, when he looks down at it again. Now he think’s about it, it’s kinda gross. Still fascinating, but definitely  gross.

Derek comes back from... somewhere, looks less constipated, less angry; he crouches beside him, pulls out dressings and tape from the first aid kit, starts to cover the wound, fingers surprisingly gentle where Stiles expected tough-love style thoroughness. “At least keep it covered until it’s done,” he says, as he tapes the dressing down.

When Derek finishes, he drops the kit and dressings on Scott’s lap, “Pack it up, I’ll dig out a spare pair of jeans.”

Stiles and Scott watch him go in silence and he settles back into the cushions again.

He must have blacked out again for a bit, because he opens his eyes and Derek and Scott are arguing very quietly across the room, Derek’s arms crossed tightly over his chest, Scott gesturing expansively. They both turn to look at him as soon as he registers that he’s awake. He’s feeling a little less awful. His leg is throbbing in time with his pulse, but not too painfully and he’s been covered in a frayed and ancient blanket.

When he tries to sit up, Scott rushes over and helps, “We called Mom, and Deaton. They agreed you probably exhausted yourself. Mom didn’t want us to let you sleep, but you’d already got there, so we just had to watch you instead. Make sure you woke up.”

“Uh. Thanks.” He’s not really sure how he feels right now.

He vaguely remembers doing some ill advised magic while not exactly in his right mind. “Did I..?”

“Yes. You did.” Derek says, tone terse, as he hands him a pair of jeans. Stiles takes them and tries not to look at him too hard, feeling at once both really stupid, and fully vindicated. Even if it was a stupid thing to do, it _had_ worked.

“Deaton said we should come over when you wake up. You’ve been out about an hour,” Scott helps him get the ruined jeans off. It’s slow going, because Stiles’ limbs are still annoyingly weak, and his left leg isn’t as mobile as it should be. In fact, they have to work together to get his left leg clear and Stiles grits his teeth against the rising pain of the dull throb as they do.

Stiles is not looking forward to the looks and the lecture from Deaton when they get there, considering their previous conversation. But he lets Scott help him into the new jeans, figuring it’s best to just get it all over with, is mildly amazed that they turn out to be his size. Derek and Scott between them get him standing again, and Derek hands him a bottle of Gatorade once they’re all sure he’s not going to fall over.

“You’re dehydrated. Drink it.”

Stiles wrinkles his nose at the bright blue liquid. “I hate this stuff.” But he opens it and takes a sip anyway. Derek’s shoulders visibly relax.

\---

“Well, she was definitely naked. And not in a happy fun times way, either.”

Deaton raises an eyebrow at him. Stiles rolls his eyes, “Fine. Ash grey skin, dangly black breasts, like, right down to her hips long and dangly, like in those old folk tale illustrations where they throw them over their shoulders. And literally black, like coal black. I’m sensing a theme. Ash. Coal.” He waves his hand a little, in a dismissive manner, “Her hair was almost silver and tangled with grass and twigs and leaves. Also, she was carrying a sickle in her right hand, a slingshot on her left wrist.”

Deaton looks to Scott, “And the male?”

Scott looks thoughtful for a moment, “Dark brown skin? I think he was wearing, I’m not sure - a shift? A tunic? And his hair was grass, real grass, green and yellow and growing from his head, neck and shoulders. He had the same weapons.”

Stiles sips at the foul smelling, and even more foul tasting, concoction Deaton had given him as soon as Scott and Derek had helped him through the door. He’d said something about it being a rejuvenation remedy. He’s not sure what’s in it, but it tastes like sweaty gym socks smell. It seems to be making him feel better though. Makes him want to look into this potions thing, even if it does sound ridiculously Harry Potterish.

“I’m thinking Field Elves,” he says, “Not sure which ones, though. Scott, did you hear the language? All I got was screaming.”

Scott nods, “Yeah. Sounded Russian, maybe.”

Deaton pulls a book down from the usually locked cabinet in the far corner of the back room, flips through it with quick fingers. “That makes sense. The most common Field Elves hail from the Slavic regions. What they are doing here, however, is not something that I can tell you.”

Derek shifts a little where he’s standing in the corner listening, hands tucked into his pants pockets, “Are there likely to be more of them? Or is this a pair traveling alone?”

Stiles taps his fingers on his knee. He’s perched himself up on one of the counters after deciding that standing was giving him leg-ache, that he’s still feeling a little weak; his thigh is hot to the touch, uncomfortable under the jeans. Deaton had given him a calculating look as he’d done it, and he’s pretty sure the man wanted to say something, ask something, but instead he’d clamped his lips together, turned away with a slight frown. The man’s an enigma wrapped in a puzzle and it’s driving him nuts.

In the present Stiles hums thoughtfully. “They killed a couple college kids and drained their blood into the earth. They’re not traveling. Or not anymore, if they were. That’s basically territory marking for them.”

Deaton nods again, “Agreed. And there are likely to be more. The older races band together these days. Family groups, mostly. Which means you’ll have more around, perhaps in the Preserve. More likely in the town itself.”

“And obviously willing to kill again.” Derek guesses, before Stiles can jump on that ‘older races’ thing. ‘Older races’ implies ‘newer races’, and both imply a lot more shit going on than Deaton’s ever hinted about, Portunes notwithstanding.

Stiles nods instead, making a mental note to follow up on the comment later, “Probably to mark more of their territory. I mean, it’s only an educated assumption at this point, but where were these two kids killed? At the West end of town? So they’ll want three more killings, to complete the corners, right?”

Derek runs a hand over his face, into his hair, looks tired suddenly. “Territory marking in an already established pack territory. Either they’re very powerful and willing to risk the confrontation, or there’s something else going on here. I’m not sure I like either option.”

That gives Stiles pause, “Oh. Right. When the female was all Screamy McScreamerston at me, I still had the sight spell going. She was seriously wrapped up in spells. Head to toe. I caught a look at the male as well, so was he. Which makes me think yeah, they’re pretty damn powerful.”

Deaton shakes his head slightly, his expression confused for a moment before clearing back to his habitual non-expression, hands Stiles the book he just took down, “Take my books on European Fae, Stiles. Make sure you identify these elves correctly, you have enough to go on. Getting it wrong... is not a good idea.”

Stiles snorts, “I know that. Not stupid.”

Scott and Derek both make protesting noises at that declaration, which has Deaton frowning at them, “Well, yes. On that note, I would like to speak to Stiles alone. You two can please wait outside hearing range, we will call you when Stiles is done.”

Stiles gives them both a very sullen look as they leave the room. They’re ganging up on him, together, Scott and Derek, both giving him the same ‘you’re an idiot and you know it’ look. He hates it when those two actually band together. It’s unsettling. Obviously, they’d told Deaton _everything_ when they called him earlier.

They wait five minutes, usually more than enough time and then some, to be sure the werewolves are actually out of range. He picks a little at the bandage on his finger. It needs changing after all the mud and blood and scrambling.

Deaton takes the time to pull out a few more books from his collection, stacking them neatly beside Stiles as he does. Each of them looks pretty old, frayed at the edges, the spines cracked and peeling, and some more than a little water-stained, one a little charred at the edges; he’s skimmed through most of them before in his studies and research. Stiles pokes at them distractedly.

“You appear to have neglected your training, Mr Stilinski.”

“What?” Not what he was expecting Deaton to open with. He frowns at the Emissary, takes in the way he’s standing, arms crossed, stern expression. Well, stern _er_ expression than he’s ever seen on the usually passive-faced man.

“A conclusion drawn from your actions today. You know better than most the sorts of things that can go wrong with a simple mispronunciation or misdirection when magic is involved. It can have immediate consequences, cataclysmic in proportions, or it can be subtle, easily missed, yet have equally as disastrous consequences. You not only allowed yourself to be distracted, thus dropping the shield, which I can understand given your relatively recent introduction to that particular magic, but you also gave in to the temptation to use unpracticed magics at a time of crisis.”

“ _What_.” If he was a little less wary of putting his weight on his leg, Stiles would have slid from the counter to confront Deaton at that, instead he throws a thoroughly pissed off look at him, “ _Really_? My life was in danger, and you expect me to be, what, _perfect_?”

“No,” Deaton shakes his head, “I expect you to use that brain I know you have, and to practice not only discretion, but good judgement. You have the training and the skills  to prevent what happened to you today, and yet...” Stiles goes to interrupt, not really even sure what he’s going to say, but Deaton speaks over him, “We both know, though rarely address, that your magic is... _different_ , shall we say. You, more than most magic users, need to keep yourself in check. Need to not give in to temptation. I have taught you how to maintain the necessary mental barriers. _And you did not use them_.”

Stiles slumps a little. He knows his magic’s weird. He _knows_ it. And he instinctively feels that Deaton is right as well, that he’s got to keep himself in check. Still, no-one actually tells him why, or points him in the right direction to figure it out for himself. All the books he’s read on the subject have completely drawn a blank and it’s driving him up the wall. And of course Deaton goes and throws it in his face like this. Throws it in his face, as if he really does know what’s going on, but refuses to tell him anything, just like he always has, telling everyone the bare minimum and not enough. And he’s getting sick of it.

“In times of war, I’ll grant you that your insistence on trying out the new healing spell _may_ have been a good idea. But it is not a time of war, you were safe by that point and being treated. If you had been maintaining your training, you would not have allowed yourself to give in to that temptation, for any reason, through any outward influence. However. The outcome is that you are healed and we know you can perform the spell. Though, we also don’t know what else may have happened.” Deaton pauses and Stiles holds his gaze. “Do not do it again, Mr Stilinski.”

Stiles folds his arms over his chest, glares at his knees in sullen silence, rubs one hand over the wound where he can still feel it, can still feel the oddly creeping pain of it, mulling it over.

“Mr Stilinski? I hope I have impressed upon you the importance of this.”

Stiles snorts, “You _know_ I get it. I _always_ get it. There is no lack of _getting it_ in this situation. I’m just-” he cuts himself off when he finally looks back up at Deaton. The man looks as impassive as ever all over again and Stiles realizes it’s futile, trying to get the man to tell him anything he doesn’t want to. So he shuts up. “Fine. I’ll work on the mental barriers. And no more trying new spells under the influence. Got it.”

Deaton nods and then places another, smaller, older book on the pile by Stiles uninjured thigh. “Before I let you go, I feel you need to learn something.”

It’s Stiles turn to affect an impassive expression. Deaton could mean anything by ‘learn something’, so he sits quietly and waits for the man to get on with it. Tries not to chew his own cheek off as he grinds his teeth in the effort to say nothing.

Deaton simply quirks a brow, obviously seeing and understanding more than Stiles likes. “A long distance communication spell. You won’t find it in any of the books yourself and Miss Martin have been using. I am unsure if she can use it, but you should be able to.”

“And if only I can use it, why is it helpful?”

“Because it is a listening and projecting communication spell - you can turn it on, speak into it, and your intended recipient will hear you, and you will hear them.”

“Oh. Awesome.”

Deaton flips open the oldest book, the pages dusty and brittle and gently places his finger at a word, speaks it aloud for Stiles, “ _Ácwiðeaþ_.”

Stiles repeats the word a few times, practicing the strange sounds, getting his tongue used to them, until Deaton nods.

“Now what?”

“Now, you take the smallest thread, and you weave. Lift your hands, cup them.” Deaton does it, to demonstrate, “Blow a gentle breath across your palms as you weave the spell together within them. It must be light, delicate, made of intricate knots that speak communication to you. Think of the person you wish to contact. Weave that thought into the spell.”

Stiles thinks a moment, then pulls his phone out and fires off a quick text. Deaton quirks his brow yet again, but Stiles ignores him. He puts the phone away again once he gets a reply and cups his hands as Deaton had shown him.

He tugs out the smallest strand of his magic and weaves, gently murmuring the spell towards his hands, feeling the breath of the word sliding across his skin. His own magic is all very intuitive, simply giving his intentions intricate form, the words themselves more of a mental anchor than anything else. He’s pretty sure that if anyone else were to try the spells the way he does them, they’d fail. It’s something he’s thought about far too often, mostly when he’s on a research bender and it’s reaching the darkest, most disquieting portion of the night.

A delicate weave of knots and latices forms in his palms, they take on a pale golden hue in his mind. When he weaves in the thought of who he wants to contact, putting in their personality, their habits, the way he views  them, he opens his eyes and the spell has taken visible form.

A green globe, like liquid fire, hangs an inch above his palms, dripping tendrils of power across his skin, from his fingers, the drops dissipating before they hit the ground. The globe isn’t hot, despite what it looks like, it barely has any tactility at all. At most, he can feel the gentlest of feather touches as the green dripping magic slides across his skin.

He glances at Deaton, who nods, and he lets himself grin.

He takes a breath, then speaks at the gently spinning globe, “Lydia?”

“Stiles!” The delight in her voice as it emanates from the globe is clear to hear, “It worked.”

“We _have_ to see if you can do this one. How does it look on your end?”

“It doesn’t.” She pauses very briefly, “Your voice is coming right out of thin air, almost directly in my ear. Alison can’t hear you at all.”

Stiles pauses, “Thats… useful, actually. Awesome. Thanks for letting me practice, Lyds.”

“No problem, just promise me you’ll show me it, later.”

“Of course.”

Deaton mimes closing his hands and Stiles follows suit, carefully folding his palms together, the globe breaking apart between them in swirls of power, sliding and dripping down his fingers until it’s completely vanished, only slight tingles of magic left tracing his skin.

He shakes his hands out, “That’s actually awesome, thanks Deaton.” The man may be infuriating, but he does pull through with some useful stuff. Which isn’t to say that Stiles trusts him any further than he can throw him. Which isn’t that far, he’s not exactly the beefy built type.

Deaton takes back the old book, slides it into place on the shelf, “Practice it, make sure you can do it without thinking too hard. You may need it.”

Stiles snorts again, already running through the plenty of situations this particular spell could have come in very useful, more than a little annoyed that Deaton had waited until now to teach it to him. “When have I ever _not_ practiced these little tips and tricks you give me? Don’t answer that.”

Deaton actually smirks, “Take the books, research the Field Elves. You cannot afford to make a mistake with them, they are more powerful than even the oldest stories tell. Though…” He trails off, then shakes his head.

Stiles makes a ‘go on’ gesture at him, as he slides gingerly to his feet, but Deaton shakes his head again.

“Bring the books back in one piece, Mr Stilinski.”

\---

Scott declines to join him on this research bender, mostly because Sheriff Stilinski will be home, where Stiles gets to tell him about the whole leg thing; instead he heads off to clean up and change out of his blood spattered clothes before going to find Alison, and he’d mentioned something about Isaac, too. Stiles doesn’t really ask these days.

There’s really nothing Scott can do right now anyway, other than inform Alison, so she in turn can inform her father, so the local Hunters are aware there’s a new Big Bad in town. Again.

So Scott collects his bag from the trunk and, after a quick slap on the back and half-hug, an admonition to take it easy for a couple days, even if there are bad things to sort out, and a pointed look at Derek which Stiles ignores because really, they are ganging up on him and he definitely doesn’t like it, Scott runs off with a wave.

Which leaves Stiles at the not-so-tender mercies of Derek, and, in less time than he’d like, because they’re almost there already, his dad.

Derek drives, at his own insistence and more than one meaningful look at Stiles’ leg, so Stiles tries not to huddle in the passenger seat. The books are taking up space on the tiny rear seats, stacked almost neatly, though a few now sliding about with every turn in the street. At least there’s no blood this time. Though he still has to clean out what he’d dripped all over it from earlier.

That ‘no blood’ policy he vaguely remembers thinking of the last time he was in here seems like a good idea.

“Dad’s gonna kill me.”

Derek snorts, “No, he’s not.”

“Alright, fine. But he’s going to ground me.”

“Maybe.”

Stiles reaches for and flicks absently through one of the books, stretches his sore leg a little. “Not that it’ll put too much of a cramp in my packed social life.”

“Nope.”

Stiles narrows his eyes and gives Derek a considering look, “You’re being all.. monosyllabic-ish again.”

Derek quirks a brow at him, but doesn’t take his eyes off the road as they turn onto Stiles’ street, “‘Monosyllabic-ish,’” he drawls with every ounce of sarcasm he can apparently muster.

Stiles glares at him a little, not buying it, “Out with it, dude. What?”

This time Derek just shakes his head a little, “Leave it alone, Stiles.”

They pull into the driveway and before Stiles can say anything more, his dad opens the front door, steps out, watches them. He gives them a concerned look, apparently noticing the lack of Scott, that Derek’s driving this time, “What happened?” He’s wearing his worn in sleep clothing, looks a little bleary and rumpled.

With a jolt, Stiles realizes it’s really stupidly late, almost midnight and his dad must have been waiting up for him. That just pushes his guilt all the higher, because his dad does not need more reasons to worry right now.

They pile out of the car, Stiles rushing a little at the realization of exactly how late it is. The both of them reach in the back of the jeep to grab books before they make their way the the front porch and his dad. Stiles starts speaking before they even get there, tries to push the guilt down. “Eh. Some trouble. Field Elves, nasty ones, with great big sickles. You should find some way to warn everyone that the killers are armed and dangerous. Also naked.”

His dad blinks at him, “Naked. Really. That’s what I’m working with here? Elves, sickles and naked?”

Stiles grins, “Pretty much!”

Annoyingly, his dad turns to look at Derek, as if looking for confirmation. He’d protest, but his arms are full of books and his leg’s already aching again. Hasn’t really stopped, if he’s honest with himself, which he often isn’t.

“Sir.” Derek gives a respectful nod, and it literally never stops being odd to see Derek deferring to his dad, “I wasn’t actually there, but Stiles is right. They’re old, powerful and dangerous. It looks like they’re trying to encroach on the pack’s territory.”

His dad does that thing he knows they both do, touches the side of his hand to his forehead in a gesture of frustration. He’s never been a fan of seeing his dad do that. “Alright. We’re working on the assumption that they’re armed and dangerous anyway. Hard not to.” He pauses before pinning Stiles with a glare, “Stiles. Why are you limping.”

He freezes, weight thankfully on his good leg. “Uh, so, there was a fight? And the naked one got me with the sickle. But it’s nothing! And mostly cleared up now and everything’s fine and I’m fine and stop glaring at me.” He glares right back at his dad for a moment, until his dad straightens up, wipes that same hand over his eyes.

“Stiles…” He shakes his head, glances at the silent Derek, looking supremely awkward with his arms full of books, “We’ll talk about this later. But at least tell me Alan looked at it? Melissa?”

Stiles hesitates, doesn’t fail to see his dad’s eyes narrowing again, then nods, “Yeah. I’m good to go. We just need to find out what they are, before they do it again.”

They stand-off for a moment more, gazes locked, then his dad sighs and stands back, gesturing for them both to come inside, “There’s leftover’s in the fridge. I’ll see you tomorrow Stiles, and I expect to have a good long talk with you about what happened when I do. And try to get some sleep, tonight, even if it is technically Saturday now.”

Stiles nods and he watches his dad climb the stairs, before turning to look at Derek, “Say _nothing_.” He waves a not-very-threatening finger at him, juggling books as he does. “At least I didn’t get grounded.”

Derek only raises his eyebrows at him, giving him the tried and trusted sassy expression he apparently reserves almost exclusively for him these days, before hefting the books and making his way further into the house. Stiles follows, realizes he really is limping a bit. “I am in so much trouble,” he moans, a whine creeping in despite his best efforts.

They dump the books on the kitchen table, the clatter of them loud in the silent darkness of the house.

Derek looks at him calmly “Probably. He worries. Not without reason,” then shrugs when Stiles gives him a baleful look, picks up a book at random and flips through it.

Stiles relents a little, he sort of agrees, a bit, and heads for the food. He works quickly and in silence, not as uncomfortable as he could be, tries not to limp too visibly, and makes up a couple plates of finger food for them to take to his room while they research.

He hasn’t had to go on a research binge since, well, since the Portunes first turned up, actually. Which was not long enough ago in his opinion, now that he thinks about it.

They manage to get all the books and the food up to his room with minimum fuss, mostly thanks to Derek’s ability to not fall over ever, and set up for a long night of reading and cross referencing and reading some more. Not your typical eighteen year old’s Friday night, but he’ll take what he gets.

As Stiles opens the third book, maybe an hour later, Derek gets up and starts prowling the room, probably restless from too much time sitting and reading. He’s long since discarded his jacket and his shoes, made himself more comfortable in Stiles space. Stiles watches him in silence, watches as he stretches a little, the soft, worn sweater he’s wearing pulling tight across his chest and shoulders as he does, watches as he paces across the floor a few times. He doesn’t say anything until Derek reaches the corner where the enormous, still unidentified feather and his near-complete staff are being stored. They’re both leaning against the wall, out of the way of prying eyes and sticky fingers.

Derek reaches out to touch the staff, a curious look on his face and Stiles breaks the silence, “Don’t. Touch it, I mean. Don’t do that.”

Derek pauses, fingers curling back into his palm, eyebrows creased in a frown as he looks over at him.

Stiles shakes his head a little, flips a page in his book, “It’s not ready for anyone else to touch it yet. It’s not finished.”

“It smells like blood,” Derek says, giving a quiet sniff, but he pulls his hand back completely.

“Yeah, the knife slipped.” He holds up the freshly re-bandaged finger as proof.

Derek’s snort contains all the implied snark about Stiles’ clumsiness that he doesn’t actually need to voice and Stiles huffs at him in reply, returns to the book, tries to parse the 15th century language.

“And the feather?”

He looks back up and Derek has reached out again, this time his blunt fingers are very close to the vane of the large feather he’d been gifted with by whatever-it-was in the preserve. He jerks his chin in a nod, “You can touch that one.”

So Derek does. He runs his fingers gently over the vane, watching as it gives under the pressure, folds, swirls, bends right back into shape again, the golden brown colours catching the yellow-orange light from his lamps and glinting a little. Derek lifts his fingers to his nose, sniffs with a frown. “It smells... familiar.”

Stiles is pretty sure the surprise shows on his face, “Yeah? Well, if you can tell me what it is, that’d be great. I’m still working on that one.”

Derek sniffs again, then shakes his head. “It’s familiar, but I have no idea why.”

Stiles snorts this time, “Helpful.”

“I’ll think on it.”

Derek goes back to prowling and Stiles flips through his fourth book, one of the older, water-stained ones, absently rubs at the still sore, still burning-hot wound on his thigh.

He’s so glad he started self studying these languages, he’s not as good at this translation lark as Lydia is, but he knows enough by now that when he finds the thing he’s been looking for, he spots it immediately and gives a soft woop of surprise-pleasure.

Derek is at his side in an instant, “What?”

“ _Poludnitsa_!”

Derek blinks, “Bless you?”

Stiles thumps him on the shoulder in exasperation, then shakes his hand out a little because he always manages to forget that Derek’s basically made of granite. “That’s their name, dork, or well, Poleviki actually, because it was male. The female one was different though, not Poludnitsa, a Roggenmhome, I think.”

Derek shifts a little, the hand he has on the back of the chair moving enough to brush the back of Stiles neck. Stiles suppresses any reaction he wants to have to that, and then returns to the present anyway when Derek says, “This seems like it was too easy.”

Stiles levels a glare at him, “Well next time I’ll give you all the books to read, see how far _you_ get with Middle English and Latin and-”

“ _Stiles_.” Derek says it on an exasperated sounding sigh, so he shuts up.

“Yeah, fine. They’re easier to identify than I thought they’d be, too. And this passage is pretty clear on the danger they pose.” He pokes a piece of the text and Derek squints at it, then at him, raises his brows as if to say ‘seriously?’ Stiles grins, translates, “Field Elves are fiercely protective of their domains, yadda yadda, the Polevik strangles drunkards foolish enough to trample through or fall asleep in his fields, yadda yadda, children who venture in are led astray or - _yuck_ \- suckled at the poisonous black breast of the Roggenmhome etcetera.”

Derek wrinkles his nose slightly, “But those kids throats were slashed and their blood drained.”

Stiles nods, “Yeah - _this_ is basically talking about trespassers. The blood thing is a common theme in most rites of Fae Folk, though. They’re in the process of _making_ their territory right now - when they’re done, _then_ a drunk trespasser will end up strangled.”

“Or a child suckled with _poison_.”

“Or that, yeah.”

There’s a lengthy pause, then Derek asks, “So what do we do? Does it say anything about how to stop them, or kill them?”

Stiles scans the page, translating in his head as he does, “The Poludnitsa. Uh. She’s like the deity? Goddess? Looks like if we can negotiate with her, we can get a blood-and-pain-free end to all of this.”

Derek shifts again, “I’m sensing a ‘but’ here.”

Stiles sniggers slightly, gets a rap to the back of his head for his troubles, “Alright, alright. Yeah. She’s only going to show herself at midday. So we can’t just call her up now, we have to wait and call her up tomorrow. Or, later. Whatever.”

“And?”

Stiles huffs, “ _And_ if we can’t get her to deal with her Clan, then we’re a bit shit out of luck, because these guys are really damn hard to kill. And - huh.” He pauses, rereads the sentence, “Actually, it says they don’t spell cast on their own. They’re one of the many races who _are_ magic, rather than being able to _use_ magic.”

And there’s that ‘many races’ thing again. If all these books, and Deaton’s idle mentions are to be believed, then there really are a whole hell of a lot more supernatural creatures out in the world than just witches and werewolves. Obviously the Portunes had been his first clue, but goddamn, _really_. Someone needs to just give him a list, ‘ _these_ exist, _these_ were just made up’.

Derek huffs at him, moves away and drops onto the edge of the bed again, “So why were they wrapped in spells when you saw them? If they can’t perform magic themselves, they would have to have been cast by someone else. Does that mean they _wanted_ these spells put on them for some reason? Or is someone outside the Clan doing something to them?”

Stiles shrugs, “All very good questions, none of which I know the answer to.”

Derek runs a hand through his hair, “There are too many questions with this whole situation.”

“Which is why I recommend we speak to the Poludnitsa tomorrow, instead of going all claws blazing into the Clan. There could be something else going on. I also recommend thinking about something else for a while.”

Derek gives him an incredulous look.

“What? We know what they are, and I know how to call the Poludnitsa, there is _literally_ nothing else we can do right now. So…” He grabs his phone, fires off another message to Lydia, whom he just knows is also still awake. Time to practice his new spell.

\---

A shaft of light slants into the room through a crack in the curtain, slowly makes it way across the floor. Stiles wrinkles his nose a little when the light inches across his cheek, shifts slightly when it slides onto his closed eyes. He frowns, lifts a hand to bat at the light ineffectively. When that doesn’t work, he rolls over, snuggles deeper into the pillow he’s hugging.

The movement sets off a bout of pain that he was absolutely _not_ expecting, it shoots up from his thigh into his hip, down into his knee and he makes a garbled noise of protest, reaches down to rub at the wound. His fingers contact denim, register feverish heat and he finally opens his eyes.

Derek’s just blinking awake barely a foot away from him, has started stretching out of what looks like a tight ball; one hand, though, is still stretched out toward Stiles. They’re on the floor of his bedroom, having fallen asleep mid movie and Stiles is aching extremely uncomfortably in the small of his back. He eyes Derek’s hand for a moment, until it closes into a loose fist and Derek sits up, runs his hands through his flat-on-one-side, sticking-straight-up-on-the-other, sleep hair.

“Your leg?” Apparently his first-thing-after-sleep voice is a lot deeper and far more gravel-filled than his usual voice. He’s not entirely sure what to do with that.

Stiles scrunches his face up in annoyance, levers himself to sitting.“Yeah. Floor didn’t help.” He smacks his lips once, his mouth tastes like, well, like he spent the night on the floor, and his breath probably doesn’t smell any better either. He needs a shower and maybe an entire tube of toothpaste, before he’s ready to face the world properly.

A hand lands gently on his wrist and he squints at Derek as the pain is drawn away from him, watches the black veins crawl up the alpha’s arm. Derek sits back again after maybe a minute, leaving only a ghost of the pain behind.

Stiles falters for a moment, before muttering, “Thanks, dude,” and pulling himself laboriously to his feet, looks everywhere but at the still sleep-soft man on his floor.

His dad’s on early shift, so they don’t bother to be quiet about taking turns to shower. Stiles spends more time than he thought he would under the stream, working the cramp out of his thigh, thoroughly inspecting the wound, making sure it looks ok. It’s almost complete sealed up, edges closing together, though still reddened and radiating heat. He puts a fresh bandage over it and his finger when he’s dried off.

When he steps back into his room, Derek simply raises a brow at him and he shrugs, limping slightly to get to his wardrobe and clean clothes.

Stiles lends Derek the biggest shirt he’s got - which still doesn’t quite fit over the alpha’s shoulders and Stiles catches himself looking before Derek shrugs his jacket on - and breakfast turns out to be toast and coffee with a side order of grumbling about sleeping on floors.

“I am never sleeping on the fucking floor again, Derek. I am not sixteen anymore, my body can’t take the hits. I’m getting old, oh my _god_.”

“Eighteen isn’t _old_ , Stiles.”

Stiles stirs the coffee furiously, determinedly. He’s probably put too much sugar in it, but he doesn’t actually care, even after the shower and the pain-drain, he’s aching, and grumpy with it and he just wants to complain without worrying he’s pissing Derek off as he does.

As he reaches to drop the spoon in the sink, Derek catches his wrist again, syphons more of the pain, a wave of black sliding up his arm, disappearing under the sleeve. Stiles glares a little. The man hasn’t even moved, he’s still reading the damn newspaper his dad left on the kitchen table, the only evidence Derek’s even thinking about anything other than the news is the small smirk curving his lips.

It does, however, effectively shut Stiles up. After a long minute, Derek lets go, shakes his arm out a little and Stiles, now silent, goes back to his coffee, an odd, squirmy feeling in his belly.

\---

They take Stiles’ Jeep, his magical apparatus and books piled onto the back seats for easy access, because they need to go a little off-road. The only place a Poludnitsa will allow herself to be called to is the middle of a field, so that’s what they’re doing.

Stiles drives, Derek directs from a map they bought at a gas station on the way; as well as they know Beacon Hills, they’d still needed the help to find an unoccupied piece of land, not too close to any buildings or roads, that was large enough it could be considered a field.

“So. To do this, by the way,” Stile starts as they make their way to the far end of town, away from too much civilisation, “We have to do a bit of blood letting.”

Derek shifts his gaze from the road ahead to Stiles, and he can almost feel it on his skin.

“How much is ‘a bit’?”

Stiles shrugs, “It’s not very specific, but probably no more than a few drops? It’s mostly just to show willing, like a sacrifice.”

Derek hums, shifts in his seat, “You’ve already lost enough blood in the last day. Is there really no other way to do this?” He picks up one of the spell books, flips through it as if it will give him some new answers.

Stiles just snorts at him, “Nope. They’re old school - not as old as the Portunes, but old enough, and you know what the old ones are like for blood.”

Derek falls silent, but continues to flip through the book.

They pass another scarecrow festival advert, complete with scarecrows in jaunty positions, holding up the large sign, something mechanical in the back making two of them wave at the world with slightly jerky motions. Their fixed, slightly terrifying grins give the whole tableau a surreal air. The things are really creeping Stiles out, “Seriously. Those scarecrows.” He gives a melodramatic whole-body shudder, “When they come to kill us all in our sleep, I will be so vindicated it’ll make your brain hurt.”

“That doesn’t even make sense.”

“It totally does. I’ll be right, everyone else will be wrong. The Mayor will be snake-demoning his way through town. Just you wait and see. I will be vindicated.”

Derek snorts at him, “If you’re going to start getting your ideas about the supernatural from television teen dramas, I’ll have to take away your TV.”

“What do you mean ‘start’?”

Stiles grins at Derek’s expression. It’s a truly wonderful mix of incredulity and what-the-fuck. Until it shuts down into his usual near-blank expression.

“Of course. You realize Scott is not the Chosen One and you are not, in fact, Xander?”

Stiles scoffs at him, “If anything, I’m Willow, dude.”

Derek closes the book with a snap, gives him a very dry look, “I certainly hope not, you did watch season six? I’d hate to have to put you down for the good of society.”

\---

He's got everything laid out, the four corners called, circle of protection in place, small altar set up with the objects of power where he needs them. All that’s left to do is to let a little blood, making the sacrifice needed to perform the actual summoning.

Stiles always hates the blood letting bits. More so than usual today, as his leg has been protesting something chronic for the past ten minutes, apparently not happy with all the kneeling he’s been doing to set things up and lay things out.

Derek seems to sense it, because when Stiles stands, forcing back a grunt of pain as he does, he once again wraps his fingers around Stiles wrist, drains some of the pain away. The guy has to be getting sick of all this pain drain by now, right? Can doing it so many times in one day have an adverse reaction to a wolf? He’ll have to ask some time. Stiles nods his thanks without voicing any of his thoughts, relaxes a little, pulls the blade out of his all purpose swiss army knife with steady fingers, holds it up.

"Alright, so we just need to get a couple drops each into the goblet, then I can get on with the words. Ready?"

Derek snorts, but he holds his hand out. Stiles makes a quick cut with the blade, big enough that it won’t heal over too quickly, and Derek lets a few drops of blood fall into the goblet. He wipes his rapidly healing hand on a wad of tissue brought for the occasion, as Stiles makes a small cut in his own flesh, wincing as he does. Stiles blood drips and mixes into the goblet and he wipes his hand, cleans it quickly and wraps it with the prepared gauze and tape. He has way too many cuts on his person right now.

Putting the knife away, he stirs the mixture in the goblet and steps back into the circle, places the goblet back in it’s place on the small alter. He motions for Derek to step inside too, “Don’t stray, but don’t get too close, ok?”

Derek nods and lowers his hands to his sides, flexes his fingers in that way Stiles knows means he’s making himself ready for a fight.

“Alright.” He steps up to the altar, addresses the air above it, “The intention behind my actions here are to raise the Poludnitsa, to exchange information and set boundaries, and to do what needs to be done for the protection of the Hale pack and its territories.”

He always feels a bit silly doing that part, but apparently intentions need to be laid out when using a circle of power. Something about borrowing power from the force of life itself to perform this magic and not pissing said force off in the doing so. In any case, he intentionally left the wording a bit free at the end, because they honestly don’t know what they may have to do here.

He takes a moment to settle his thoughts, brings up the mental barriers Deaton had told him off for neglecting, closes his eyes and pays attention. The power he can always feel just on the very fringes of his senses, that he barely even registers anymore, grows. The circle is working. He waits a moment longer, feels the power increase and then opens his eyes.

Drawing on a little of his own power, he weaves the simple spell into place and lights the five candles on the altar at once. They snap into flame, sputtering only a little, then settle into steady streams, curving gently in the slight breeze of the warm noon-time weather.

“Hear my voice, feel my _words_. I summon thee, Poludnitsa. _Ábíed_ Poludnitsa.” He falls into a soft chanting rhythm, “Come to this place, Poludnitsa. Hear my voice, feel my _power_.”

He can feel the power of the circle singing around him, within him. His own power reaches out to it, touches it.

“ _Ábíed_ Poludnitsa. _Ábíed_ Poludnitsa.”

A strong wind picks up, suddenly; his and Derek’s jackets snap in the force of it, the sharp sounds ringing through the open air of the field. The candles stay lit only because Stiles wills it, their flames buffeted, streaming, then dancing.

“ _Ábíed_ Poludnitsa.”

The wind grows stronger still, picks up dust and the whole swirls together, a small localised tornado forming right in front of the altar, just outside the circle, invisible edges defined by the dust as it sweeps around but not over them. Stiles watches it carefully, watches the way the dust pulls together in the centre of it, growing and taking shape.

“ _Ábíed_ Poludnitsa.”

He can feel Derek behind him, can feel his presence in his senses, and he can also feel that he’s shifting from foot to foot, making himself ready, just in case.

The swirling dust has taken vaguely humanoid form, and is growing more and more recognisably humanoid by the second. It moves ponderously, walking around the circle, slow steps showing a gait much larger than a typical human. Stiles doesn’t move, doesn't follow it around except with his eyes, concentrates instead on maintaining the balance of power keeping the circle together, the flames lit.

“ _Ábíed_ Poludnitsa.”

What steps back into the spot in front of the altar is almost opaque, the barest hints of the distant trees can just be seen through the body, belying the appearance of solidity.

The Poludnitsa is imposingly tall, square jawed and strikingly handsome with sharp Slavic features. Her hair is very long, sweeping past her hips and such a pale gold it’s almost silver, whipping about in the still strong winds. She blinks down at him, expression haughty, and he sees one brown eye, one blue, her thin lips pursed into a tight line. She stands straight, folds her arms across her thin chest and he registers her clothing, a masculine suit all in white, vaguely Victorian in appearance, complete with vest, cravat and even pocket watch. At her wrists and ears, tiny gold scythes glint in the noonlight, a tiny sickle glints at her throat.

There’s silence for long minutes. Stiles feels Derek shifting behind him again, the Poludnitsa’s eyes flick to him quickly, then return to Stiles.

“What do you want, Kúzelník?” she finally asks, breaking the silence. Her accent is strong, as if she has only recently left her homeland, though that can’t be true.

“ _Greetings_ to you too, Lady,” he says with a sarcastic lilt to his tone, “You are standing in Hale pack territory.”

Something, some emotion he can’t readily identify, passes across her face and is gone in an instant. “ _Greetings Kúzelník_ ,” she almost sneers the words, “I am aware of where I stand. What do you and your Magics want?”

“What do we want? Lady, you have invaded established pack territory and killed two adolescent humans. What we want is for you to -”

The Poludnitsa jerks forward in an aborted movement, “Odmietnutie! No. No invasion.”

Stiles glares for a moment, “You don’t deny the killings though, I notice.”

The Poludnitsa stiffens, eyes narrowing and he can feel Derek shifting again behind him, knows that he’s ready to strike if the being makes even the slightest hint of a wrong move.

“I am... _sorry_ for the deaths, Kúzelník. They were not of my doing, nor, I believe, of my Clan. I regret it appears they were.”

Stiles frowns in confusion, but before he can say anything, Derek growls, “Lady, I can _smell_ the same scent on you that was all over Stiles after they attacked him yesterday.”

Stiles glances back at Derek, amazed both at his loquaciousness and the scent thing, finds him visibly frustrated, verging on angry.

The Poludnitsa shakes her head, “Kdežeby!”

“Whether you _believe_ it or not isn’t something I care about - two members of your Clan not only killed two humans within my territory, but they went on to attack two of members of my pack.”

Derek doesn’t move at all, but somehow he becomes threatening, his every atom exuding danger, intent to kill. He hasn’t even wolfed out, only flashes his eyes red once. “I have forcibly removed beings from my territory for lesser transgressions, believe me when I say I will find a way to remove your Clan as well.”

The Poludnitsa bristles, bares her teeth in a flash of something ancient and feral, eyes gleaming the brilliant white of the midday sun, “I am _Poludnitsa_ , the Lady of Midday.” She growls the words, and Stiles feels the power behind them, the long, uncountable ages of life, “I am _heat_ and _sunlight_ and _parching thirst_. What do I care of stupid wolflings that know _nothing_ of the old ways? You seek to threaten me, _wilkołak_?”

Her hands drop and the air around the Poludnitsa shifts as they do, rises, forms a whirling surge of dust and power around her as she speaks; the candle flames flicker, dance, almost go out before Stiles forces his will on them, keeps them lit. Something feels almost… _slippery_ about her magic as it rises around them. Slippery and _wrong_.

“Do you, _wilkołak_?!”

Stiles braces one hand against Derek’s chest as he tries to step forward, lifts the other in warding against anything the Poludnitsa could do, now understanding that she is _the_ Poludnitsa, not _a_ Poludnitsa. His magic races up and out, forming a barrier, and he steps forward, pushes his hand palm forward, forces the shifting air back, away from himself and to the fading, dust-bleeding figure of the Poludnitsa.

“ _Ástyntan_ , Poludnitsa!”

The air whips around them, throwing their jackets, their hair in every direction, but Stiles stands against it, stares the Poludnitsa down. She’s almost unrecognisable, nothing like her more humanoid self, now a being of dust and wind and light glinting on nothing. He can feel Derek’s muscles tense beneath his restraining hand.

The blindingly bright eyes turn to regard him, “ _Wysoka Magia, Kúzelník_?”

He doesn’t know what she’s saying, needs to get a translation as soon as possible, but he doesn’t let it stop him. “Lady. We do not _threaten_ ,” he smirks at her, “We _promise_. And you are not making us like you any more than before with this display.”

There is a tense moment where nothing is heard beyond the shifting wind and then - and then _laughter_. The air rings with it. Stiles relaxes, lowers his hand, dropping the warding, though Derek is still tensed beneath the other.

The Poludnitsa slowly reforms, pulling the wind into herself as she slowly solidifies again before them, her more humanoid figure bent slightly in laughter, yet even then still towering over them both. Mere moments later, she is as she was, still smiling, her hands now tucked neatly into her pockets.

“I _like_ you, Kúzelník. I cannot _do_ or _be_ all that I am in this place, in this time, but I will seek those that have wronged you. I _will_ find them, Kúzelník. If they are indeed of my Clan…” She breaks off, simply shrugs. Something in her expression is off, but Stiles can’t figure out what, even with the Portunes as practice, he still can’t quite read non-human expressions..

Derek finally relaxes and steps back again. Stiles lets him go, can feel the tension in the air all but gone, his and the Poludnitsa’s magics no longer warring. The slippery, wrong feeling has dissipated along with the wind.

“Thank you, Lady.”

The Poludnitsa nods at him, then looks to Derek, “Hale. Your claim to this land is strong. Old. I can feel it, the claim, permeating through the very earth beneath us. The claim is older even than my years on this continent. Though not so old as the Old Ones. I apologize for the boundaries that have been overstepped by my people.”

“Thank you, Lady,” Derek’s voice is softer than before, though still not back to his normal level, but Stiles can’t look to him right now, the whole of his attention on the demi-deity before them. He doesn’t know what, or why, but something is yelling at him in the back of his mind, something is confusing him.

He can’t pin down what it is for the life of him, and she’s already begun to fade, “Lady…”

“ _Kúzelník_ ,” her eyes flash again, “I cannot speak more.”

Stiles blinks, “Cannot...or will not?”

The Poludnitsa smiles, even as her edges bleed once again into dust, “I have met one other such as you in all my long time on the Earth, Kúzelník. You are much the same. I wish you good health, and…”

Stiles wants to grab her, to shake her into telling him whatever it is she isn’t telling him, whatever it is that she cannot say, but she’s no longer solid, her form breaking into so much dust, fading away before their eyes. And he cannot cross the circle. Not yet.

“...I wish you luck, with your staff.”

Before he can respond, she is gone and the candles finally sputter out.

 

 *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize to the Polish and anyone who actually knows Old English, because I'm using online translators. If I got anything wrong, send me a note and we can have a chat to work it out! 
> 
> Warnings: Murder of two college kids, using sickles, the violence expected of such an act. A skirmish with supernatural creatures intent on murder, with resulting wounds. Altered mental state. Poor decision making while not in a right mental state due to blood loss, compounded by adrenalin and perception altering poisons. Blood. Gore. Intentional cutting and blood letting for spell crafting.


	3. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Seriously, warning for violence and death - deaths of original characters, all around violence. More explicit warnings at the end (which contain mild spoilers).
> 
> Thanks to Emeraldincandescent for the BETA :D

  
**Chapter 02**

 

*

 

An explosion of fire against earth thunders around the enclosed space of the barn; the walls shake, the ground trembles, a significant amount of dust rains down. Stiles is almost deafened, despite his hands being clamped over his ears. When the noise finally subsides, he looks around, taking in the damage.

“Uh, oops?” He ruffles dust out of his hair, sneezes.

Morrell gives him a very cool look and he grins a little sheepishly in return.

“Stiles, you need to pay attention when using this spell. You cannot throw it willy-nilly and just expect it to work.”

Stiles pouts a little, “Well, it exploded, right? That means it worked?”

Morrell shakes her head, sighs, her thin arms crossed over her abdomen, delicate fingers resting lightly in the crooks of her elbows. She looks unruffled, but still not exactly happy. “No. This is not a spell for creating explosions. You know that. This is a delicate, powerful spell, intended to ensnare. _Not_ explode.”

Stiles rakes his hands through his hair, dislodging more dust, making himself sneeze again. They’ve been practicing for hours now. He normally learns new spells at a rate that annoys Lydia to no end, a rate that worries him a little. Today however, he’s well into his third hour of practice and he still hasn’t mastered this one. He just can’t get his head around it, he’s too frustrated, too confused.

Basically, he’s not been having a good couple days. The meeting with the Poludnitsa has thrown him for a loop. His head isn’t where it should be, his leg hurts and his magic feels _weird_.

“Once more, Stiles. Be calm. Concentrate.”

Stiles snorts and steps back, tries to ‘be calm’. It doesn’t really work. He’s building up a well of frustration and anger and doesn’t really know how to hold it back properly right now.

His magic really is all about intent though, and at the moment, apparently, all his intentions are to destroy things. So, perhaps he really does need to calm down.

“ _Bælegsa_ ,” he whispers to himself, pulling a delicate thread of power from within. He tries to picture the spell working, wrapping strings of fire around his opponent, trapping them, ensnaring them, holding them in place until he cuts the magic off.

He steps forward to throw the spell, hand thrust out palm first, and nearly topples as his thigh twinges horribly, giving under his weight as pain shoots up and into his hip. The spell veers off from the mannequin target, Morrell ducking the strands of flame as they go, and it hits a scarecrow.

Stiles ignores the sound of the explosion, the fire that starts up, shifting and crackling over the paper mache figure, rubs at his thigh instead, grits his teeth against the pain, the urge to scream. A hand on his shoulder makes him look up, “Stiles?”

Morrell gives him a concerned look but he shakes his head, “It’s nothing.” She doesn’t look at all convinced, but after a moment she nods and her hand drops from his shoulder.  
He stands up properly, forcing his still aching leg straight with a slight wince, “At least we’re down one ugly golem, right?”

Morrell rolls her eyes, moves back to her position as Stiles eyes the scarecrow. It’s already stopped burning and now just looks almost terrifying, all flaking cinder and twisted metal framework.

“ _Again_ , Stiles.”

Stiles huffs, pulls his attention back to the work, rolls his shoulders, his neck, and starts over.

A half hour, and two more destroyed scarecrows later - he’s beginning to think his magic is deliberately aiming for the things, which is a disquieting thought - Morell holds a staying hand up, glancing at the doorway. They haven’t made much progress, and he’s just getting more and more irritated, but Stiles backs off and a moment later the large barn door opens, hinges creaking and wood groaning. Deaton steps through, features calm as he takes in the damage, closes the door behind him.

“I see this is going well.”

Stiles snorts, looks up in time to catch the look passing between the Emissaries; for a brief moment they look concerned, wary, frustrated, before their usual impassive expressions return. He feels a sudden flare of resentment in his chest, at the way they never actually speak, always sharing knowing looks and understanding without ever explaining. “What!” He explodes, gestures wildly between the two of them, “What is this? You two, with the looks and the eyebrows and the never saying anything out loud. _What_?”  
  
Morell crosses her arms over her abdomen again, quirks one perfect eyebrow and purses her lips, which just annoys him further. Deaton puts his hands on his hips, jacket bunching up around his hands. And then they’re looking at each other again. Stiles makes an irritated, incoherent, _angry_ noise, “ _Seriously_. This is all very mysterious and spooky of you both, but some of us like to actually _speak_ to one another. Using, like, words and sentences that convey actual meaning!”

Deaton shakes his head, as if coming to a decision, or maybe shaking something off, “You have far more important things to worry about, Stiles. Now that we are absolutely certain of the presence of the Poludnitsa and her clan.” He nods in the direction of the still lightly smoking scarecrows from the last round of attempts. “We do not yet know her full intentions, so _this_ is unacceptable.”

Stiles scoffs, runs a hand through his hair, “ _He says_ as if no one else has ever thought of that. _He says_ as if it’s as easy as snapping my damn fingers to get a spell right. _He says as if no one else in the room gets it_.” He takes a breath, “Deaton, you are preaching to the damn _choir_. I need to know _more_. I mean, she said she’s met someone like me before! And she knew. About. My. Staff!”

He’s still incredulous about that. There is literally no way to mistake ‘good luck with your staff’ as anything other than exactly what it is. Even Derek had given him a worried look after that comment. Nobody outside of the pack, the two Emissaries, and his father and Melissa know’s about his staff. He doesn’t talk about it, he doesn’t show it to anyone. He leaves it in his room, or takes it to the back room at the Veterinarian’s to work on it, and that’s it. So how the Poludnitsa, brand new to the area, knew about his staff has been preying on his mind more than a bit.

“If there have been others like me, like she said,” he starts, before either of them can respond, and he’s visibly agitated now, “Shouldn’t there be evidence of them? Shouldn’t I have been able to _find_ something, _anything_ , about them? Shouldn’t _you guys_ know something?”

Deaton sighs, “If we could tell you anything, Stiles, we would.”

He doesn’t realise how angry he is until Deaton says that. There are more ways than one to interpret _that_ sentence, “Really, Deaton? _Really_? So, what, I’m actually just paranoid about all this, and you guys really don’t _actually_ know anything more than you’ve already said -”

“Stiles. Calm down.” Morell has dropped her hands to her sides, shifted her stance a little, but Stiles doesn’t calm down, he keeps going. He’s started pacing at some point, and he has no idea when, but he’s moving back and forth, gesticulating at the Emissaries as he rants, only faintly aware that magic is flickering around his hands as he does, sparks of brilliance in the dim lighting of the barn. His magic has started doing that recently. Yet another thing to worry about.

“There’s literally _nothing else_ you could tell me, or the pack, that you’re not, for example, holding back for stupidly mysterious and Machiavellian reasons?”

Deaton’s eyes briefly flash with anger, “Get a grip on yourself, Mr Stilinski. We are not the enemy. You’re beginning to sound as paranoid as Peter Hale, and we can only deal with one paranoid supernatural anomaly at a time.”

Stiles stops, his stomach bottoming out as Deaton’s words break through his irritation. He blinks, “Oh, great. So I show a little justifiable rancor, and suddenly I’m lumped in with _Peter_? Thanks, Deaton.” He folds his arms across his chest, almost hugging himself, hurt and angry, and he pulls the flashes of magic back inside, where they can’t be seen, where they can’t reveal his agitation.

Deaton sighs again, looks to Morell - and she’s moved back into her relaxed state, arms loosely crossed over her abdomen once more - before he responds, looking Stiles straight in the eye, “I apologize. But Stiles, you need to reign in your emotions. You need to bring yourself completely under control. Your magic is different, not seen for generations, we all know this and it appears directly affected by your mood. The evidence for that is right here in this barn.” He doesn’t need to point out the scarecrows this time, Stiles eyes automatically find them. “When you allow your emotions to run rampant, you create danger. For everyone, including yourself.”

Stiles deflates a little. He knows Deaton is right, he just doesn’t like hearing it. He’s still certain, however, certain to his very core, that the Emissaries know far more about what is going on than they ever let on.

Morell shifts a little, watching him closely as she speaks, “You must attend to your meditation, you must stop neglecting it. Clear your mind, work through how you are feeling, understand yourself, so that you can begin to understand your magic. We are running out of time.”

“It isn’t that easy! And you didn’t actually answer my question.”

Deaton gives him one of his annoying smiles, “Of course we do not tell you everything we know, Stiles. The supernatural world is a far bigger and more extraordinary place than even you can imagine. However, what we know has, for now at least, little to no impact on Beacon Hills or it’s residents. If, when, you need to know something, we will tell you. And you must be satisfied.”

Stiles stops himself from grinding his teeth, “Fine.” ‘Bigger’ and ‘more extraordinary’? ‘Little to no impact’? ‘Running out of time’ for what? And that ‘paranoid supernatural anomaly’, after a moments thought, leaves him thinking they didn’t really mean him. He does need to reign himself in, thats true, but now he needs to crack the books again, maybe raid the Hale collection for the older tomes.

He eventually manages to master the spell. But he kills the rest of the scarecrows in the process.

\---

The night air rings with the sound of nocturnal creatures; foxes and coyotes calling, insects chirping, the rustling of rodents in the leaf-litter and soil. It is a good night for the Hunt.

Portunes stream through the Preserve, long lines of tiny bodies moving so fast that the naked eye sees only the stirring of the grass, the shifting leaf skeletons in their wake.

There is no moon tonight, no light, only deep cloud cover left over from a light rain that dampened the soil and lifted the earthen scents, made tracking all the easier.

The Portunes ignore the scattered herds of deer, the foxes and coyotes, the owls, and are ignored in return; they head instead for the rats, the mice, the lizards. Large populations of small creatures that can take the brunt of their hunting with little impact on their numbers. Already some of their company are burdened with carcasses, lashed to sturdy twigs and carried between the larger members of the Hunt.

A complicated hierarchy of Portunes lead the Hunt, choosing the direction in which to roam, the animals deemed right for a kill. They chatter amongst themselves as they run, scent the air, listen for prey, feel for magics. It is they who first catch traces of death on the air.

The leaders call a halt and the Portunes melt into the trees, the rocks, the deep underbrush, scattering and hiding, waiting for the leaders to make their decision.

The group gathers together, tastes the air, checks the direction of the wind, follows the current carrying the traces of death to discover the direction. The more scent they catch, the stronger, the more firm is their belief that it is human death that they smell.

A decision is made. The Hunt reforms, but now they are hunting for a body.

It does not take long to find.

The boy is lying face down in the damp earth, in a small clearing. He is surrounded by Elf Shot. He has been dead maybe an hour, his throat sliced so deep his head has almost been severed. His blood has been drained deep into the soil beneath him.

The stench of his terror lingers in the air, makes the Portunes uneasy, they chatter and shiver, shifting and stamping, angry and worried.

The Hunt surrounds the clearing, examines every surface, catalogues every trace of the creatures that killed the boy, the magics used to do it, the tracks the boy made as he ran, as he was caught, as he was dragged to his death. It is a sorry tale that they read and they become angrier the more they learn.

They find his friends, camping, sleeping, unaware, little more than a mile away.

The leaders gather once more and a small troop is sent to collect the Ealdorman so a final decision can be made.

The Ealdorman arrives quickly, aware of the importance of the situation. They inspect everything the Hunt discovered and they call the leaders together once more. The Ealdorman is unsettled and unhappy. They are aware of the way Stiles feels about the new creatures in his territory, they are aware, too, of the way he likely feels about not being informed of the Poludnitsa’s arrival. That was a decision not lightly made, and not yet explained, and the treaty with the Hale pack could hinge on the explanation.

A decision is quickly made, and the Ealdorman sends a small troop of Portunes to Stiles. He must be told, must be made aware, so that he and the pack can make their own decisions, can react accordingly to the threat in their territory.

The Ealdorman tells the Hunt to continue, they must eat, after all.

When the Hunt is gone, but for a few left to guard the body alongside the Ealdorman, they step closer to the dead boys face. They don’t look for long, turning away after a mere moment, for the boy’s features are so contorted in fear, and there is nothing they can do for him that has not already been done.

The Ealdorman decides they will protect this boy’s body until the human authorities find him. The Ealdorman steps back, looks up at the sky, listens to the night, feels the magic in the air.

“Ástellan…”

\---

Stiles wakes with a start, pleasant dream gone in less than a second as his eyes snap open, scan the room. He’s lying on his belly, face mashed into his pillow, covers kicked almost clean off despite the hint of chill to his room. Shifting a little, he pushes up onto his elbows and looks around, spots the open window - which explains the chill, he’d closed it before falling into bed earlier - and small movements on the floor in the patch of orange-yellow light from the street lights.

Even just-woken, he recognizes those movements now, almost too fast to be seen, too much intent to be mice. “Portunes?” he asks, voice scratchy, speech slurred just a little by sleep.

“Seht, Stiles Stilinski. Greeting,” one of the little shadows detaches from the others and stands in the light where he can see them clearly.

Stiles shifts and slides onto his back, then pushes himself up to sitting, stretching a little as he does. His thigh twinges as he does, and he curls in on himself a little in reaction, a small sharp intake of breath the only other outward sign of pain. He rubs at the offending muscle harshly, grits his teeth until the pain fades, then relaxes back into the bedding, looks over at his guests.

He’s on the alert now that the Portunes have spoken, letting him know that they’re here, and he can see clearly that they’re even more restless than usual. They don’t visit the Stilinski home often, and usually when they do it’s not good news. He yawns expansively, covering his mouth with the back of his hand as he does, “S’up?” he manages a moment later, swinging his legs around and placing his feet on the floor.

“Bad tiding, Stiles Stilinski,” the Portune says, a strange lilt to their voice. Not sadness, exactly - Stiles has at least learned to recognize sadness in a Portunes voice - but something close.

He’s even more alert now, rubs a hand over his face, through his sleep-wild hair, dreading the news. “Tell me.”

“Body found. Boy. Not good, not good. Roggenmhome.”

A flicker of light casts eerie shadows as his magic crawls over his hands, dancing across his skin before he can control it and pull it back in again. The Portunes shift, perhaps uneasily, eyes steady as they watch him. He curls his hands into fists, grits his teeth, forces his voice steady as he asks, “Ealdorman?”

The Portunes all move back a little in the wake of his magic, his anger, the one who had spoken watches him carefully. “Ealdorman watching. Keeping safe. Sent we, give tiding.”  
  
This is exactly what they hadn’t wanted to happen. He’d hoped that talking to the Poludnitsa had put an end to it, that she’d be able to keep her people in line. Not justice, by any estimation, certainly not for their families, but at the very least an end to the deaths. Apparently not, though. He grabs his phone from the bedside table, calls up the text screen for a group text. It’s best that they get this over with, and quickly.

“Thank you,” he says as he types, “Give Ealdorman my thanks. Can you please find a way for him to be found quickly? Without suspicion. Lead someone in his direction, maybe?”

The Portunes all nod and are gone between one blink and the next.

It’s not as early as he thought, close to five in the morning. But now that he’s awake, he knows he won’t sleep again, so he makes his way downstairs, brushing his fingers over the staff as he passes it, drawing comfort from it’s steady, patient presence. The pack will be coming here, it’s easier in the long run as he has the books and the Bestiary that they’ll need in order to do their research. He puts coffee on and makes himself breakfast to pass the time.

By the time they start to arrive, closer to seven, he’s washed, dressed, eaten and already started pouring through his books. Scott arrives first, Isaac with him and Scott’s always had a key, lets them both in, sure in the knowledge that Stiles can feel them before they even reach the door, knows who it is. They head straight for the kitchen pausing only briefly to wave a sleep-slow greeting with tight smiles. Stiles hears them puttering around, making something to eat. They both look like they could do with more sleep.  
  
Derek is next, he feels him coming before he even reaches the house, can feel his presence stronger than most of the others. He goes to open the door for him, finds that he looks as unsettled and unhappy as Stiles had guessed he would. As he steps through the door, he nods upstairs, “The Sheriff?”

Stiles shrugs, “He was already at work, he’s probably already been called in on the new body.” He hasn’t heard from his dad yet, but he suspects he will soon.

Derek nods and heads into the front room, settles on the sofa and picks up one of the books, flipping through it absently. He feels better for Derek’s presence, even if the man does look like he hasn’t slept at all. Something about having him nearby just helps him relax.

Erica and Boyd arrive soon after, he doesn’t even attempt to close the door, having felt them on the fringes of his senses as Derek came in. Boyd is as impassive as ever, Erica pouting. “I swear this town just doesn’t want us to sleep,” she grumbles as she pushes in, heads for the kitchen as well. Boyd only lifts his brows slightly and goes to join Derek in the front room.

Danny, Alison and Lydia arrive just as everyone is settling down in various spots around the front room, Scott going to open the door for them at Stiles’ suggestion and pressing a kiss into Alison’s hair when she steps in. Lydia looks as put together as ever, and she’s carrying her favored casting bag, the one large enough to carry not only her multitude of school supplies, but also everything she could need at a moments notice, while still being fashionable enough to pass as a simple purse.

“Great. Everyone’s here,” Stiles remarks from his spot beside Derek, as Scott closes the door again. The girls perch themselves on chairs brought from the kitchen, joining the circle around the coffee table as Scott and Danny settle on the floor with Isaac and Boyd.

It’s still a little odd to Stiles sometimes, that the pack has grown so much, included so many - even stranger when they all come into his home at once, take up his space like this. He likes them all together, though, can feel them all close and wrapped up in his senses, wonders if it feels at all similar to how a werewolf experiences pack, if it feels like safety, security and family. Probably does.

After a moment, Derek nods at Stiles to get started.

Stiles leans forward a little, elbows on his knees. “So. To start with. Ealdorman sent a party of Portunes’ with a message a couple hours ago; another body was found, killed the same way as the other two, by the Roggenmhome. Which means talking to the Poludnitsa didn’t work. Which means she isn’t controlling her Clan, or can’t control it. Which means -”

“Which means we need to get them out of pack territory,” Derek interrupts, “But we already know that’s not something we can do. We’ll have to kill them.”

Scott, ever for conflict resolutions that don’t involve death, clears his throat, “Is there really no way to just keep them out of the territory? Like, exile them? A magical barrier that keeps them out, maybe?”

Lydia shakes her head, “No. Stiles and I have already looked at that option; the last time we had big bads to deal with, actually. We can put a barrier up that keeps them out, yes, but it won’t just keep _them_ out, it’ll keep everyone and everything magical out. Overkill, basically.”

“You can’t tailor it to just the Roc... Roh.. Elf?” Isaac smirks at himself as he fails to pronounce the unfamiliar word.

Stiles snorts a little, but smiles back at him, “Nope. At least, not right now? I might be able to one day.... But right now, we’d only be able to put up a generalized barrier. Which, well, would stop bad things from getting in, which is great. But it would also stop good things from getting in.”

“And we’re not certain, either, that if you guys left the territory, you’d be able to get back in again,” Lydia adds. Everyone looks varying degrees of confused, concerned, or frustrated at that pronouncement.

After a long pause, Erica grins, pushes her hair over her shoulder, “So, if we can’t keep them out with magic, how do we kill them?”

Derek folds his arms over his chest, frowns, “Stiles already told me it’ll be hard. Have you found anything at all that could help? Something that could lower their strength? Make them vulnerable?”

Stiles and Lydia share a glance, the whole pack silent, then he turns back to Derek, “So far? Nothing. But, that’s why the books,” he makes an expansive gesture at the books on the coffee table, now interspersed with discarded plates and bowls and half-drunk cups of coffee. “We’ve some time before school to get in some more reading. Also homework - I want all of you to take a book, scour it. Anything that mentions Dark Elves, the Poludnitsa, Poleviki and Roggenmhome. Make a note, let me and Lydia know.”

He drops his hands back to his knees, “We need to see if we missed anything. Because if not, well… it’ll come down to brute strength and magic, against ancient magical killing machines that have healing abilities as good as, if not better, than a werewolf.”

“And the rest of the Clan may want to protect them,” Boyd says into the quiet that follows, giving Derek a significant, calculating look. Derek simply raises a brow and Stiles wonders what the hell is going on.

Alison picks up where Boyd left off, though., “They’re family units. So, even if the Poleviki and Roggenmhome have committed atrocious acts, they’re going to want to protect them. Which means it’ll be us, against perhaps an entire family of Dark Elves, all fighting to keep their family members alive.”

“So, this is going to be fun, then,” Danny says lightly as he picks up one of the books.

Alison nods, straightens up, “I’ll put out the feelers to my contacts within the ranks of the Hunters, see if any of them have had to deal with Dark Elves before. We might get lucky, there are at least three families I know of that specialise in the less common supernatural creatures.”

Stiles claps his hands together, a broad grin on his face, “Great! Select a book or two each, and lets get started.”

\---

“I want to try talking to her again,” Stiles says, stopping Derek with a hand on his arm before he can leave.

Everyone else has already taken their books and headed for school, resignation in their expressions - and perhaps eagerness in Erica and Isaac’s. Stiles has grabbed his bag, his own pile of books, ready to leave and grateful that Derek hung back after the others left as he wants to speak with him about this alone.

Derek’s expression shifts, uncertainty and a flash of something he can’t place in his eyes when he grabs his arm, it turns quickly to frustration, moves through acceptance and into neutral all within a handful of heartbeats. Stiles has gotten good at reading Derek as well, over the years. He doesn’t know why he’s reacting like this though, so he just plows on.

“I just want to ask _why_. I want to understand, I want to know if she actually did anything, and failed, or if she was playing us. I mean, it would be good if we had a heads up on whether we need to fight her as well, y’know?”

Derek shrugs, “Will knowing why she did it, or not, really help? I’m not saying it won’t help to know if she’s going to try to protect her clan, but her motivations?”

Stiles pushes him out the front door, closes and locks before answering as he heads for the jeep. “I have no way of knowing, until I ask. Maybe she’s got a damn good reason for not doing anything? I doubt it, but I still wanna ask.”

Derek comes to a stop a few feet behind Stiles, watches in silence as he unlocks the door, then, “I don’t think it’ll help-”

Stiles roughly throws his bag onto the passenger seat, interrupts him, “So? You thought the same with the whole Kanima shitstorm. You thought the same of the first Coven that blazed it’s way into Beacon Hills. Even if it turns out we don’t need to know her motivation, I still want to ask her!”

Derek’s ears have gone a little red, the bridge of his nose too. Stiles forces himself to calm down, before his magic puts in another appearance, this time in daylight, on a public street.

When he looks back up again, Derek’s eyebrows have done the thing where they try to reach his hairline, “I was going to say I agree, Stiles. But thank you for the reminders of my past poor decision making skills.”

Stiles feels pretty stupid. He rubs at the back of his neck, stares at the open door of his jeep, then up to lock gazes with Derek again, “Sorry.”

Derek nods tightly, “We’ll take Lydia and Scott as backup, just in case. I don’t want you going alone, or generally any of the pack being alone, with the Roggenhmome still loose.”  
  
Stiles goes to protest that he can look after himself, but Derek cuts him off with a stern look, “I know you can, Stiles, we all know it. But if the Poludnitsa is allowing them to do this, and she’s as powerful as you say, then we all need to stay together, protect each other, you included.”

Stiles outwardly relents, “Fine.” He pauses as he slides into the drivers seat, looks back at Derek, “Want a lift anywhere?”

\---

Stiles can see his house from here, he made sure of that, can see the rise of the roof behind the trees, so he knows he’s close enough if any of the wolves want to find him and if he needs to get home in a hurry. He’s not exactly _not_ following the rules, but he’s not exactly following them either. If he get’s in any real trouble, his house is _right there_ , after all.

He’s settled himself on a large, partially moss covered rock, half buried in the earth. He’s basking in the sunlight as it filters through the branches, bare as they now are, in the center of a natural clearing just within the bounds of the preserve. Having taken the hint about his meditation to heart, even if he’s ignoring or flatly angered by everything else Deaton and Morell said during practice, Stiles is determined to get his meditation back on track, his magic under control. So he sits, legs crossed, feet bared, jeans rolled up past his ankles to give himself more skin contact with the rock, hands resting loose on the moss, and his eyes closed as he concentrates on his breathing and emptying his mind.  
  
He’d spoken briefly with his dad after school, after homework and just before coming out here. Had left him putting a start to their first dinner together in a week or so. The Portunes had done as asked, tricked the camping group into awakening and wandering in the right direction, until they found the body, which means his dad has been exceptionally busy, now that it’s clear the first two deaths weren’t a fluke.

Apparently the whole town is restless, worried, scared for their kids, and a curfew is being considered, his dad had confided, until the killer is caught. Stiles actually thinks that’s a good idea, both to keep the Roggenhmome and Poleviki from finding any more easy targets, and to make it easier for the pack to search them out and deal with them without being seen themselves.

His dad has also told him some of the discoveries made with the new body. Something inscribed in Celtic across the boy’s back in his own blood. Lydia’s working on a translation.  
The books haven’t turned up anything useful yet, just a little more information on the history of the creatures, their origins. He’s still hopeful that something will come up though. Alison is waiting on a response from her contacts - which they all know will take a little time, due to the usual Hunter politics - having put the word out that afternoon.

Stiles looses a breath, traces of magic sighing out with it, into the air around him. He needs to stop thinking, stop worrying, calm his mind. He concentrates on his breathing again, feels the air as he pulls it into his lungs, the trace magics that flow into him as he does. Feels the magics deep within him as he holds for seven heartbeats, feels the way it mixes with his own. Feels it as he breathes it back out again, less magic leaving than had entered.

The air shimmers around him, a heat-haze like effect caused by the magics stirring around and within him, drawn up from the earth, out from the air. He can feel it sliding over his skin, light tickles of power webbing across his body; the longer and harder he concentrates, the more intricate and powerful the webbing becomes.

He refocuses on his breathing, ignores the tickles of magic on his skin, focuses on deep even breaths filling his body in steady waves of air and magic. Once his mind is clear - not an easy feat but he’s had a lot of practice by this point - he turns his focus inward, to the well of magic deep within himself. The sheer power and light of it almost overwhelms him, as it always does, but he holds steady against it, port in a storm. He reaches out, traces the swirling mass of threads, the hard core beneath.

His attention is caught by a tiny flicker of black, caught deep within the tangled, constantly shifting knots of his magic; he moves closer and reaches out -  
A force, sudden and terrifying in its ferocity, throws him right across the clearing, a cry of pain forced out of him before he hits the ground, winded and gasping. He looks up and the Poleviki is standing on the rock, his first sight of him in daylight, his nut-brown, tree bark-like skin and faded green grass a stark shock of the supernatural intruding into the everyday.

Stiles panics for a moment, tries to catch his breath as Derek’s warning to not be alone right now, to always have someone with him, to protect each other, ringing through his mind. Suddenly wishes he hadn’t talked himself into ignoring it.

The Dark Elf roars at him, muscles bunching and straining in his shoulders, his chest, the grass growing freely all over his head and shoulders and back swaying as he moves, as he jumps down from the rock, sickle raised. Stiles’ heart feels like it’s in his throat, but he manages to get to his feet, reeling and suddenly aware that he’s bleeding, blood sliding slickly down his arm, over his fingers. He can’t even feel the wound.

He pulls himself together as the Poleviki approaches, throws up a shield just in time, as the creature swings the sickle, scrapes the blade against the barrier instead of his chest, and he takes a step back, hands still raised. The Poleviki roars again, spittle flying as it beats at the barrier, claws and fists and blade, looking for a weakness, a way through. Stiles yells at it in fear, anger, roaring right back at it as it scrabbles against his magic, roaring out his rage that this thing has invaded _his_ land, _his_ home, killed _his_ people, threatened _his_ pack.

He pushes, hard and sudden, using the spell he finds easiest, a blast of telekinetic power that throws the Poleviki back toward the rock, “Get. Away. From. ME!”. It goes with a scream, but rolls and bounces back to it’s feet almost immediately and Stiles barely has time to pull another thread of magic from his core, before it’s coming back at him, not even dazed.

“Fuck! I need to learn how to do this without constantly. Needing. To. Grab. Threads!” He punctuates each word with a pulse of magic, throwing out invisible forces, that hit the Poleviki like a fist, each one forcing the creature a step back, even as it rages at him in a language he can’t understand.

His thoughts are thrown off when the Poleviki dodges the next blow and leaps at him again, all feral growling, claws and sickle at the fore and he has no idea why he’s suddenly focussing on it, but he can feel something else here with them, something else’s magic crawling and creeping around them, and it feels almost _familiar_. He’s so distracted by the sensation that his desperate throw of Bælegsa misses by an inch. The flames pass so close by the Poleviki, they sear its skin, sending it screaming away from him, its grass aflame on its back.

The spell hits a tree across the clearing instead and it bursts into flame. Stiles pushes away from the Dark Elf’s screaming form, determined to get away, concentrates on moving, even as his thigh twinges horribly again barely five steps away, the pain nearly sending him to his knees. “Fuck!”

He takes an unsteady step, forcing himself to move through the pain, and suddenly the Poleviki is there again, body wreathed in smoke and ash, and the creeping sensation of someone else’s magic is suddenly overwhelming. He can almost see it, wreathed around the Poleviki like the smoke, shifting and changing, growing stronger and stronger. The sensation grows as the Poleviki batters at his barrier, even as he keeps moving, trying to get away, keeps casting forces of power, knocking it back, keeping it away, cursing himself for panicking, for not being ready.

The other magic grows, swells and his ears _pop_ as it does, and he shakes his head, a sudden spike of fear churning his stomach.

Just as he feels hundreds, thousands of Portunes coming into the range of his senses, the magic focusses and with a sound so loud he knows the wolves will have heard it reverberating around the preserve, around this end of Beacon Hills, and a pain so intense he actually, finally, drops to his knees, clutching his head, his shield _shatters_. Magical winds, hurricane strong, blast from him, from his magic, knocking the Poleviki back, bending the trees, sweeping destruction across the clearing in a roar of sound so loud it’s a physical thing.

And then it stops.

Silence rings through the clearing, the forest, for long seconds as he stares at the Poleviki and it stares at him, his own harsh, pained breathing the only sound for hundreds of feet around.

The Poleviki lets out a triumphant yell as it leaps to its feet and surges forward, claws and sickle and still smoking grass making it appear a demon and Stiles falls back, fear sticking his voice in his throat, his heart racing.

Stiles lifts his hands, desperately throwing every spell he can muster, blasts of force, of fire, of ice, of wind. He hasn’t had to face something like this without his shield in years, can’t stop the panic from building, even as he continues to fight, defiant, angry.

The Poleviki takes the hits, ignores most of them, is barely moved by others as if it doesn’t care that its bark-like skin is tearing away with great slides of greenish blood dripping down its torso, that its grass is aflame again, that its limbs shake and it staggers as it moves. The sickle comes down again and again and Stiles voice comes unstuck, he’s screaming as it slices into his arms, into his chest.

The creature picks him up and throws him aside, his head cracking on the bark of an ancient tree, only for it to attack again as he rolls. The Poleviki’s fist crashes down, and he feels the sickening snap of a bone breaking in the arm he lifted to protect his head.

“Stiles Stilinski! Drý!”

Portunes. Thousands of them. All around him. They pour from the trees behind him, from the underbrush, everywhere at once, a wave of tiny bodies surging out of the shadows to protect him. They move so fast they’re a blur, surrounding the Poleviki in an instant, climbing its body, their swords and spears and clubs swinging, small but strong, so strong.

The Poleviki staggers again, roars of anger and pain bubbling up from its deep, blood smeared chest as the Portunes attack it, their magic coming to play as they group together, join forces in an attempt to bring it to the ground, even as it continues to move, away, ever away, across the clearing in an attempt to escape.

A group of Portunes breaks from the pile of twisting, writhing, screaming, fighting bodies, toward Stiles, “Drý, ætberstan Stiles Stilinski, ætberstan!”

He doesn’t need to be told twice and, head swimming, senses wrecked, pain blooming in every part of his body, he climbs, swaying and vision hazy, to his feet.

\---

 _Home_. He can see home. He doesn’t know how long it’s taken him to get here, his limbs are so heavy, his head hurts so bad, but he can see home. And his dad, oh gods, his dad, his dad is coming, running. He looks frantic, like he’s going to cry.

Stiles blinks, tries to tell him he’s fine, that he doesn’t need to worry, but chokes on air, coughs. He falls into his dads arms, and he doesn’t know when he turned it on, but he can see the magic. He can see it everywhere, all around him, around them both; he can see it swirling in the air, webbed across the ground, threading through the trees and the plants and all the growing things.

He must be saying something out loud, because his dad is saying something too, now. But he can’t hear him really, through the rushing of white noise in his head, just knows his dad is there, feels his strong fingers brushing through his hair. He keeps his eyes open, keeps watching the surge of magic, lifting from the ground, wrapping up and around them both, and it feels gentle, feels warm and comfortable. Feels welcoming and maybe even motherly.

He misses his mom, suddenly. And his dad abruptly looks even more distraught, so he must have said that out loud too, and he didn’t mean to, he doesn’t mean to make his dad worry.

He sees Derek and Scott now, hovering over him and his father, their faces equally drawn, expressions shattered, and there are flashing lights coming closer and the magic is wrapped around his friends, too, and he smiles and closes his eyes.

\---

A rushing sensation, lights flickering by above him and Stiles groans, tries to move, to turn his head away, cover his eyes, but he can’t. Everything’s hazy, and there are people above him, faces mostly a blur but he can still make out worry etched into their expressions. He can hear heavy trods on tiled flooring, wheels clattering, doors slamming open and closed.

“Dad?” he croaks, tries to lift a hand.

Fingers wrap around his and grip tightly, “I’m here, son. _Gods_. You’re safe, you’re fine, we’re at the hospital.” He sounds harried, his breathing hard.

Stiles calms down immediately, realizes the pain is an almost indiscernible thing on the fringes of his perception. He feels floaty, like his body doesn’t exist right anymore, like he’s been practicing astral projecting and hasn’t found his way home properly.

He drifts a little, hears his dad’s voice, other’s, all talking at once, but doesn’t understand. He blinks and -

\---

Someone is being very loud, very nearby, and Stiles does _not_ appreciate it.

“You know what he’s like! I told him myself we need to stay together, to protect each other and this is what he does!”

“Yeah, and putting a leash on him isn’t going to make anything better or easier, Derek, you know that. He’ll hate it, he’ll resent it, he’ll ditch them at the first opportunity to go ahead and do what he thinks needs doing. You know he will.”

“If you boys are quite finished? How about you wait until my son is awake to yell at you both, before deciding who should do what to protect him and the other non-wolves?”

Stiles stirs at the sound of his dad’s voice, tries to open his eyes and immediately regrets it. It’s way too bright. He’s warm and comfortable, and a repetitive beeping, a pressure in his hand, all let him know that he’s at the hospital. He’s still hazy and tired and his limbs don’t really want to work, but a moment later a cool hand smooths over his forehead and he recognises Melissa when she speaks, “Hey Stiles, nice to have you with us again.”

Stiles smiles, manages to get his mouth working, “Sorry, Ms McCall.” His voice is scratchy and quiet, even to his ears.

A hand wraps around his fingers again, squeezes tightly and he turns his head carefully, sees his dad. Behind him, he can see Scott and Derek, both looking wrecked.  
“Hey kid, you scared us,” his dad says quietly.

“Sorry,” he says again. “Polev- Pole-thing.”

Melissa checks him over, quick and efficient, but gentle, and when she’s gone, Scott and Derek crowd in to the side of the bed his dad isn’t already covering. He squeezes his dad’s hand, then turns to the two werewolves, he frowns a little, mutters, “Stop fighting.”

Closes his eyes and drifts again.

\---

The air is clammy, hot and thick, thick enough to taste. And it tastes like spices, herbs, a sensual mix of flavors; acorn and orris root, a hint of mint, others too numerous to name.

The lone figure in the almost pitch-dark room licks thin lips, tastes the air on their delicate skin, sweat breaking out in gentle salty beads over their upper lip, their brow, behind their ears. A quick flick of the wrist, and light suddenly flares, sputtering to life. A face is picked out in stark relief, orange-yellow glow of the small flame twinkling in large eyes, on high cheek bones. They lean forward, a long-stem match in hand and they carefully, carefully light the agrimony incense stick, the cedar, the dragon’s blood.

The scented smokes rise in languid swirls, twisting together, apart again, dancing like sprites in the thick air. The figure sits back on their heels, watches the patterns weaving through the darkness, divining what they can from the shapes that grow and shift and change.

The figure sits carefully, delicately poised, within a chalk drawn hexagonal pattern on the swept, bare concrete floor, runes and ancient ogham script winding through the bars and lines and circles of the casting. They are surrounded by the few objects that they need to enact this simple, yet effective casting; athame, bowl, pestle, sanitized cloth, horsehair brush, small packets and bowls of herbs and pigments. After a moment, the figure leans forward again and lights each of the six candles, sitting at each of the six points, and every flame dances a different colour.

A delicate breath of air puffs from the thin lips and the match is extinguished, a whisp of sulphur drifting up, spreading out, and they carefully place it to one side.

Chanting softly, ancient words slipping from practiced tongue, the slim figure picks up a bushel of dry grass, bound together with woven horsehair. They swipe the air above the large, earthenware bowl, cleansing the area of unwanted energies and magics, before carefully placing it down on the ground again.

The figure picks up the athame in their right hand, long, delicate fingers wrapping gracefully around the practical handle, takes seven carefully timed deep breaths and then a different language spills from the thin lips.

The athame rests in the direction of East, “Ní féidir aer reo dom.” Carefully, the figure touches the point of the blade to their fingertip, draws blood and lets a single drop fall to the bowl.

The athame rests in the direction of South, “Ní féidir tine sruthán dom.” They let a drop of blood fall again.

The athame rests in the direction of West, “Ní féidir uisce mo bháite.” Another drop of blood falls, mixing with the others.

The athame rests in the direction of North, “Ní féiir talamh adhlacadh dom.” The final drop falls and the athame is replaced on the floor, the white cloth picked up and wrapped around the wounded finger.

After a long moment, the figure places the cloth aside again and picks up the pestle, the first packet of herbs. A single pinch is selected and dropped within the bowl. The pestle is brought to bare and the blood and herbs grind and combine as soft, ancient words spill from the thin lips.

They repeat the action for all ten herbs, a single drop of hydrangea oil, seven drops of cleansed water. The final ingredient is a small packet of indigo, and they carefully grind the pigment into the mixture, mixing and combining until the paste is a deep shade of blue, shining in the flickering candle light.

The pestle is placed delicately to one side and the horsehair brush is selected, the tip dipped and swirled in the mixture. With careful, unhurried, practiced movements, they begin to inscribe words and sigils of power onto their flesh.

\---

His wrist is itchy. Which, normally, wouldn’t bother him. But right now, his entire left forearm is encased in plaster and he swears he’s going to go a little bit mad if he doesn’t get the itching to stop. He’s already tried to get at it with a pencil, but it didn’t fit. So he tried with a folded cable from his MP3 player, and that didn’t work either.

In frustration, he’s resorted to looking up if any spells exist to remove itching, even as he inscribes runes and sigils and spells of protection into the plaster in a fit of pique. He looks up from his task when a nurse comes bustling in, tucks the sharpie behind his ear, book under his pillow. She goes through the rounds, checking his vitals, making sure everythings going according to plan. He’s used to it by now, still annoyed though, and still doesn’t much like hospitals.

When she spots the work he’s done on his cast, her hand goes immediately to the small gold cross at her neck and he suppresses any reaction as she mutters something in Latin that sounds like a plea for protection. But she goes ahead and checks the cast anyway, tutting at him when he complains about the itching, makes him promise to keep it in the sling, though he’s already planning to break that promise as soon as she’s gone.

When she finally leaves, he pulls the book and sharpie out and gets back to work. “I will make this thing my _bastich_ , I swear to everything unholy,” he mutters around the lid in his teeth.

He’s fed up, if he gets right down to it. Fed up being the one that ends up in hospital all the time, _still_. Fed up with feeling completely unprepared to face something like a Poleviki on his own - if he’d been _better_ , more practiced, _stronger_ , he swears he wouldn’t have had any problem with the creature.

The fact that he is covered in a multitude of grazes, bruises and slashes, a liberal amount of stitches that pull any which way he moves, bruised ribs that make it really annoying to breathe, let alone move, and a broken arm - as well as the magical exhaustion that knocked him out for two days straight - just makes him even more aware of his frailty, his lack of preparation, his need to get the hell out of the hospital and back to his books, his _staff_ , his _learning_. He needs to know more about himself, about what his magic is, why it works the way it does. He needs to make Deaton and Morell tell him _exactly_ what they know.

He also needs to figure out what that other magic was. The magic that broke his shield. That laid him completely bare before a stronger creature. There’s as much ego caught up in the feeling as there is a need for better protection. No one and nothing has broken his shield before, it’s a new feeling for him. He doesn’t like it.

He’s pretty damn sure now that the Poleviki - and probably the Roggenmhome too, if he thinks about it, and he has - is being magically controlled by something _outside_ the Poludnitsa’s reach or understanding. Which means they’re not just up against the Poleviki and Roggenhmome, as they’d first assumed. They’re up against something bigger, something powerful enough to control an ancient Dark Elf or two. Which is a horrible thought, and really, just pushes him more in the direction of hating himself and wanting to force himself to learn _more_ , practice _harder_ , to get _better_ and _stronger_.

He’s muttering to himself, protection spells centered on the runes he’s drawing, when Scott comes in. He flops into the hospital chair by the bed, dumps school books and notes on the mattress by Stiles feet. “I never know what to think when you do that,” he says and Stiles looks up at him.

Scott’s eyebrows lift, “Your eyes are doing that thing again.” He motions at his own eyes as if in explanation.

Stiles blinks and stops chanting. “What thing?” He tucks the sharpie back behind his ear again and carefully pulls himself into a more comfortable position, trying to find a way to rest that doesn’t make his ribs ache any more than they have to. He pokes the books with one toe, considers the amount of work he’s missed being stuck in here.

"They change colour when you use certain spells. It's really weird."

Stiles scoffs, "You saying that is just, just _hypocritical_ or something, dude." Scott pulls a face at him. "Seriously though. What colours? I can't really use a mirror to see while casting."

Scott waves a hand in front of his own face, fingers wiggling a little. “They go all _pearly_. See, they’re back to normal now, though.”

Stiles maybe goes a little cross eyed in an attempt to see his own eyes, “Pearly?”

Scott laughs at him, “Like… white, but with a rainbow sort of sheen? Like the inside of an oyster shell.”

“Well… that’s sufficiently weird. I’m going to try to forget you told me that.” He’s actually glad he can’t see his own eyes if that’s what they do. There’s a long moment of silence, where he’s sure Scott is silently laughing at him. He goes to fold his arms and stops, when the motion causes a sharp stab of pain in his forearm and he bites back a yelp.

Scott winces at him in sympathy and reaches over, drains some of the pain away, “Sorry, I still can’t believe this has happened.”

Stiles watches the black lace it’s way up Scott’s arm, thinks again of the individual magical patterns he can see sometimes as the pain fades. “Yeah, well. It’s me. It’s always me - the frail human who decided to run with the wolf pack. I’m the only one ever ends up in hospital these days. It’s great... Thanks though.”

Scott laughs again, a full on belly laugh, “Says the trainee Emissary with magic that even Deaton looks uneasy about.”

Stiles rolls his eyes, smiles a little, “Yeah, well…” he says again.

“And hey, Alison’s human, too.” And Scott’s trying to bait him, he knows he is. He’s smirking.

“Yeah, but she’s a Hunter. Trained from birth in the art of kicking ass and taking numbers.”

He relaxes back into the hospital issue pillows feeling a lot more relaxed now the pain is faded almost to nothing. Though his leg still sends a twinge to remind him the wound is still there. As he does, Scott sits back, an entirely different smile on his lips, “Yeah. She’s pretty awesome.”

Stiles scoffs again, rolls his eyes, maybe grins a little. “Dude. Stop mooning, wow. Any excuse, huh?”

Scott grins, expression radiating ‘what’re you gonna do?’ “Yeah. Anyway, if you want help with, like, learning to protect yourself physically, or if there’s anything I can do to help you magically - let me know?”

And Stiles loves him all over again. There’s nothing much Scott can help with magically, but he’s still willing to give it a shot. “I might take you up on that. Which, actually - how did the meeting with the Poludnitsa go?”

Derek, Scott and Lydia had gone to meet her earlier, in his place. They’d decided to wait until he’d woken up properly and could tell Lydia what she needed to know to do it. Yet another part of why he’s fed up being stuck in here, he’d wanted to speak to the Deity himself, get some answers.

Scott looks chagrinned, pushes a hand through his hair, “Yeah. She didn’t turn up.”

“What?”

He shrugs, “We don’t know why. Lydia did everything right, swears by her favorite shoes. Apparently the Poludnitsa just… wasn’t there. Lydia could still feel her magic? But like it was a long way off, or behind a locked door. We waited ages.”

“I don’t… I need to talk to Lydia about this.”

Scott nods, “Yeah. She’ll be over later."

Stiles subsides back into the pillows again, turning the news over and over in his mind, trying to think of any reason - other than ‘ran away’ or ‘ignoring them’ - that the Poludnitsa would be unable to come when called. Which leads him back to thinking about the magic that broke his shield.

He gives Scott a slightly confused look when he remembers something, “Scott. What were you and Derek doing at my place? I remember, I remember seeing the two of you there.” He doesn’t mention the magic he saw around them both, keeps that firmly tucked away, to think about later.

“Oh. We - it’s strange - but we knew you were in trouble? And when your shield broke, we heard it. And felt it. I think the whole pack did, actually. We’d just arrived when you came out of the preserve, covered in - yeah. Your dad got to you first, but…”

He can’t hide his surprise. “Even Alison and Danny felt it?”

Scott nods, “Yeah. It was like having the wind knocked out of you. Danny was babysitting his sister, apparently she thought he’d died. Lucky no one was driving, really.”

Stiles isn’t sure what to think. Danny and Alison are both human. They’re pack members, of course, but they’re human through and through, and don’t have any magic of their own. He doesn’t know what to say.

“When are they letting you out?”

He blinks and looks over at Scott, puts the thoughts aside for now, “Maybe tomorrow. They want to keep an eye on me after my ‘unusual’ two day sleep.” Sarcastic air quotes work so much better when you have two arms.

Scott gives him a sympathetic look. “Sucks.”

\---

Two days later and he’s finally back at school again, tired, frazzled, in pain and still vaguely annoyed by everything. He’s getting a mix of sympathetic, scared and disbelieving looks from the student population again. Probably because he looks like he feels, and the rune work on his cast isn’t exactly subtle. Not that he cares about that.

He had to tell the police _something_ when they asked about what were clearly blade wounds, not claw wounds, so he went with something close to the truth - a strangely dressed older looking man attacked him with what looked like a ‘curved knife’. At least it means people are on the look out and no longer moving around alone, or even at all in the preserve.

Stiles feels a little weird about lying, but he’s gotten so used to doing it over the years that he tries not to think about it any more. At least this one will help somewhat in protecting people and his dad and Parrish know the whole truth. It does, however, mean that everyone knows he was attacked by and survived a murderer on a rampage, because this is Beacon Hills and news like that doesn’t stay quiet for long.

He finds himself wondering about bringing some more of the local law enforcement in on the supernatural shenanigans in Beacon Hills, as his dad and Deputy Parrish are the only ones who know and they could probably do with some help. Thinks about talking to Derek, the pack and his dad about it later, as it would involve letting them in on more than just werewolves, after all.

He bounces his pen on the open pages of his textbook, a tick he can’t seem to get rid of, as the AP Calc lecture drones on. Beside him, Lydia’s actually paying attention to class, but after a moment, her hand carefully comes down on his, stopping the pen. There’s a tiny spark of magic in the touch, a calming influence that he recognises immediately as one of her favorite little calming techniques. He gives her an apologetic look as she eyes him silently. Then she nods and smiles and gets back to paying attention.

As they leave for lunch at the end of class, bags packed and heavy on their shoulders, Lydia drags him aside, out into pale sunlight and cool air. He doesn’t complain, lets her do it, as they haven’t actually had a chance to talk yet, too many nurses and doctors and uninitiated uninvolved people hanging around. There are scarecrows here, too, holding up adverts for the festival and looking just as creepy and out of place as all the others he’s seen in and around town. He pokes at one as they pass it, still suspicious of the things, not a fan of the way this one looks like a cheerleader.

Lydia rolls her eyes at him, “It’s not a golem, Stiles. None of them are. You know we already checked them for the signs. At your insistence, I might add.”

Stiles snorts, “Still don’t like them. They’re going to come to life one night and murder the whole town, because that’s just how this town is.”

Lydia smiles her condescending smile and pats him lightly on the cheek, “No, Stiles.”

She picks up his broken arm, gentle as she ever is, and he shuts up and lets her do it, because he knows what she’s doing. They’re the magic users of the pack, the only ones, and as different as their magic is, as different as they are, they rely on each other for magical support. They haven’t formed their own coven yet, simply because you can’t have a coven of two. But they both want to, and they’ve both considered Gothilda, talked about her and maybe argued a little about her.

“So. Tell me what you felt, when you tried to contact the Poludnitsa?”

Lydia hums at him and he can feel the magic she’s adding to his cast; protection, healing, a small magical boost for what he’s already placed there. Her rings and bracelets sparkle with tiny hints of magic as she uses them.

“Sliminess,” she says after a long, quiet moment, “Like stepping barefoot into mud after a storm.”

Stiles nods, understanding.

“It was.. strange. I could feel her, on the fringes of my senses. I could feel her intention to join us. But something was blocking her. Something bigger, older, more powerful I think.” She purses her lips, pushes her hair over her shoulder and out of her way, “I think you’re right about this being more than just the Roggenhmome and Poleviki.”

As soon as she stops speaking a breeze picks up, gently lifts Lydia’s hair and skirt. It brushes against the bare skin of Stiles throat, through his hair and he can feel power and magic rising around them. He turns, looks around. There’s no one, and nothing, just pale sunlight in the cool air, dust dancing across the sidewalk into the parking lot. Beside him Lydia searches as well, eyes wide, fingers clutching delicately at the powerful gem at her throat.

A hush descends on the school grounds. Where they had been able to hear the students inside the lunch hall, at the tables farther down the building, now silence settles over them, the only sound the breeze cutting across the dry ground, pulling dead leaves and dry grass with it.

Stiles watches the dust.

It swirls and rises and twists in a familiar way. He gently touches Lydia’s wrist, nods to the small cloud rising in the center of the parking lot when she looks at him.

The slippery feel of the old, foreign magic twists through the hush suddenly, and the dust dances. It twists and lifts and then he can see it, like a picture forming in a cloud, there all along just waiting to be seen at the right angle, the Poludnitsa.

“Stiles..” Lydia whispers, grasps his hand and holds tight. He squeezes her hand gently in return, but keeps his gaze on the Poludnitsa.

The ancient Deity lifts a hand, beckoning, and he can see her face clearly now, though she is mostly transparent. Her proud features are twisted in fear. Terrified. She looks over her shoulder, distress clear in her every movement, then back to Stiles and Lydia, beckons once more, shouts something, but they can’t hear anything but the dust as it dances.

The slippery feel of magic grows stronger with a suddenness that steals the breath from his lungs; Lydia gasps, her grip on his hand painful. The Poludnitsa twists and screams, silently, her body bursts into dust and the hush lifts with a snap. Sound comes racing back in, the everyday replacing the extraordinary scene they had just witnessed.

Lydia doesn’t let go.

“I think… I think we need to talk to Deaton again,” she says, quietly, fearfully.

Stiles nods.

\---

“I feel the stirrings of the old blood, Alan. There is one here. Somewhere.”

Stiles pauses, holding the door to the back rooms open so it doesn’t close and give away that they’re here, that they can hear Morell. Not that she’s being particularly quiet, apparently sure as she is that no one’s around to hear her. Lydia stands beside him, head tilted, listening just as hard.

“I had suspected as much. The way these Elves are acting… it has been far from normal.”

There are sounds of a chair scraping back, a cupboard opening and closing. They must be in Deaton’s office. Lydia squeezes past and into the hall, so Stiles carefully closes the door, a muttered muffling spell on his lips as he does it, needing only the tiniest thread of magic to work - a useful spell long since learned, after the many incidents with unnecessarily squeaky doors in his supernatural experiences.

“We need to point Drý in the right direction. He is already frustrated. Angry. If we’d known sooner, the incident this weekend may have been much different.”

Deaton laughs lightly. “‘Frustrated’ and ‘angry’? That’s par for the course, wouldn’t you say?”

Stiles definitely can’t argue with that summation of himself. Drý is the name the Portunes use for him sometimes, and he still hasn’t figured out exactly what it means, though it definitely refers to his magical abilities. He frowns at Lydia and she shrugs slightly, obviously as confused as he is.

Morell makes no verbal response, but Deaton continues a moment later anyway, “I should contact Matías, as well. The time is quickly approaching. We could do with his counsel about how to proceed.”

“He was here recently, yes?”

Another laugh from Deaton, “Yes. Delivering a gift. I didn’t get to talk to him. It’s not often that they leave their lands, but he felt it was important, I believe.”

Stiles is more than a little nonplussed by the conversation. Who the hell is Matías? A gift? Who doesn’t leave their lands? What lands? The way these two talk to each other drives Stiles up a wall, they frustrate him to no end with their secrets.

Silence falls in the back rooms of the veterinarian’s. They wait together for a long five minutes, but nothing more is said, and they move back into the entrance room. Lydia shrugs and heads back to the entrance door, slams it open, making as much noise as Stiles normally makes entering a room.

Stiles pulls a face at her, trying to convey how completely ridiculous that was, but she simply smiles at him. He gives up, rolls his eyes.

“Deaton?” He pushes the door to the back rooms open again, steps through. They find the two Emissaries sitting in Deaton’s office, exactly as expected, Morell with her feet up on the desk, tapping away at her cell phone, Deaton flipping silently through an old, leather bound book.

The twin appraising looks they receive make it really obvious that they’re siblings, and he blurts a thought before he can stop himself, “Why do you have different names?”

Morell’s lips twist in a slight smile, “Different mothers.”

Stiles blinks, “Wait. What. But… What?”

Deaton speaks before anything else can be said, “What do you need, Mr. Stilinski, Ms. Martin?”

Lydia grips his arm, forces him to focus. “We saw the Poludnitsa today,” she says, slowly. “Or a shadow of her. Something powerful is holding her trapped somewhere. We think, well...” She turns her gaze to Stiles.

“We think she managed to get just a part of herself out from wherever she’s trapped, so she could show us, or warn us. There is definitely something here far more powerful than the Poleviki and Roggenhmome. We were hoping you might have some books that could help us figure out who. Or advice. Or anything, really.”

The Emissaries exchange a long, calculating look and Stiles is not imagining it when Morell gives a very slight nod, he knows he isn’t. He could get so angry with these two, the way they obviously know so much and refuse to share that knowledge. But he holds his anger back. For now.

Deaton gets up a second later, paces to one of his locked cupboards. He waves his left hand over the lock, muttering something under his breath - and Stiles has yet to figure out exactly which spell he uses on those doors, it’s been bugging him for months - and with a slight flash of the ring he wears on that hand, the lock clicks.

Deaton doesn’t even pause, he selects a large, ancient looking text from the centre shelf, and closes the door again. Another muttered spell over the lock shifts another click from somewhere inside and Deaton comes back to the desk. Morell has continued playing with her cell phone the entire time, eyes hooded as she looks at the screen.

“Here. I’m not entirely certain which creature within may be the one we are dealing with, but this book holds information about the oldest and most powerful on record.

Hopefully, what you have already learned will aid the identification.”

Stiles takes the book and looks down at the faded, stiff, water-stained leather. Gothic style lettering reads ‘Bestiary’ across the front, in a deep, old blood red. A real lead to the supernatural, a real insight into what else is out there. He finally has something concrete in his hands.

He grips it tightly, plans never to give it back.

\---

“You be good for Mommy now, Brady.”

Brady laughs lightly as her mother presses a kiss to her hair, then she pushes away and trips over to the swing-set, ready to fly as her mother talks to her friends.

Brady swings high, higher than the other kids, higher than the trees! Higher and higher, touching the sky with her scuffed toes, laughing in delight at the swoop in her belly, the wind blowing through her curls. She laughs and yells for Mommy to look, look at her flying!

Mommy smiles at her, bright and happy, waves, turns back to her friends.

At the highest point of an arc, the swoop deep in her belly, she sees a puppy, right at the edge of the park, just in the long grass by the trees. Brady laughs delightedly, slows her swing down enough to jump from it, lands and rolls, scuffs her knees but doesn’t care.

The other kids are all laughing and playing, her swing has been taken already, but she doesn’t mind, she can fly again later. The puppy is sitting up, tongue lolling as it gazes at her, all fidgety and its tail wagging so fast. She looks at her Mommy, still talking to her friend, and smiles, turns to the puppy.

The puppy is so soft and so happy, one ear folded back as it jumps at her belly, licks at her hands. Then it drops and dashes into the trees with a playful barking. Brady follows, laughing and happy. She sees the puppy sitting in a patch of light, tongue lolling again, one ear still turned over, head tilted as it looks at her, tail wagging. She crouches down beside it, runs her hands through its soft fur.

It jumps up, dashes off again with an excited yip and she laughs, “Puppy! Where’re you goin’?”

They play a game of chase, deeper and deeper into the trees, away from the park and her Mommy, away from tame, well kept land, deep, deep into the tangled underbrush.

Brady doesn’t notice, she follows her puppy as it dashes through light patches and under bushes, runs her hands through its fur when it stops and jumps up at her, tail wagging and tongue lapping.

She doesn’t notice the eyes, watching her. The teeth bared in wicked smile. Doesn’t notice the ash skinned body keeping pace. Doesn’t smell the old blood, the fresh dirt.

Not until it’s too late.

  
*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize to the Polish and anyone who actually knows Old English or Celtic/Irish, because I'm using online translators. If I got anything wrong, send me a note and we can have a chat to work it out! 
> 
> Warnings: Anger issues and swearing. Off-screen murder of a teenage boy. Very bloody violence with a sickle on a canon character, which results in altered mental state and hospitalization. Blood. Gore. Implied/off-screen violent murder of a child.


End file.
